Literary anecdotage has a claim to being the highest form of gossip, although it is more often a pretty low form. It is all the better for that, of course: at its worst, a literary anecdote portrays nobility in its subject; at its best it reveals something humorous or eccentric or slightly wicked. For example (not included here): Auden, on being asked by a worried friend if homosexuality might after all be a sin, ‘Of course it is, my dear, but we shall just have to hope that Miss God will forgive us.’ Fortunately, Donald Hall’s anthology contains many of the latter sort of story and few of the former.

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