20
Behind the grey walls sat so many young men, some undoubtedly reading, magazines, shilling shockers no doubt; legs, perhaps, over the arms of chairs; smoking; sprawling over tables, and writing while their heads went round in a circle as the pen moved– simple young men, these, who would–but there is no need to think of them grown old; others eating sweets; here they boxed; and well, Mr Hawkins must have been mad suddenly to throw up his window and bawl: “Jo—seph! Jo—seph!” and then he ran as hard as ever he could across the court, while an elderly man, in a green apron, carrying an immense pile of tin covers, hesitated, balanced, and then went on.
—Virginia Woolf, from Jacob’s Room
About
Poets think in lines, prose writers in sentences; the best of both work from sound to sense, with an ear for the music in their compositions. S for Sentence celebrates lyricism in prose, the play and craft at work in the artful sentence. We post a sentence a month along with comments by a guest writer on the craft that shapes it, on what makes it great. In one or two sentences.—Pearl Abraham, Editor
—Pam Thurschwell, author of Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880-1920 and Sigmund Freud