> 2 Your own (formative) experience, culture, country of domicile etc
I left out all those personal choices because I thought they were not universal enough. Instead of submitting my list over again I will write authors names under headings. What dictates this - is the love of the language.
Word play (and fun?) : Lewis Carrol and Shakespeare
Style : Maugham, Swift, Hazlit.
Structure : Shakespeare, Moliere, Wilde, Ibsen, Annouilh
Wit : Wilde, G.K Chesterton, Atre
"Easterness in the English" : Sarojini Naidu, Nissim Ezekiel, Tagore, Khayyam/Fitzgerald, Arundhati Roy
Simplicity (in writing and subject matter) : R.K Narayan, Ruskin Bond, Vikram Seth, Maupassant
Characterisation: Shakespeare, Carrol (Mock turtle?)
Imagination : George Lucas, Salman Rushdie, Asimov, Orwell, Carrol
Fieriness (or sensousness) :Emily Bronte, all Urdu Shayars (poets), Yeats also Khayyam
Reality : Chekov
For their stories : Harper lee, Jane Austen
Okay - two of this list don't even write in English - Atre and the Urdu Shayars, but they do add to my love of English. I think languages are linked. If you like something in one language you look for it or generate it in another. I have also included the translations because they have added to my love of English (or language in general).
-----
Come back Shanks.
