His interest in psychology and the phonetics and philology courses he took to satisfy the old-fashioned requirements for a doctorate in English literature, he said. Right after the war, Abrams was offered a job at Cornell. But, she learned to love it, too. Abrams had begun working on The Mirror and the Lamp in Cambridge in the mid-'30s and went back to it. Most of it was rewritten half a dozen times.
Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.
That book won instant acclaim. I had no reason to expect in 1953 that it would appeal to more than a specialized group interested in literary criticism. I think one of the reasons why it's been of interest to a broad spectrum of readers is because one of its emphases was on the role of metaphors in steering human thinking. One of its chief emphases, he explained, is the profound influence of biblical and theological literature on secular thinking, literature and the writing of history. People get the title wrong in all sorts of ways.