But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They "laid themselves out," they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart.

His wife's parents made substantial contributions that made the expansions possible. "
The professor asked his students to discuss the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins' "sprung rhythm" technique. Academic and professional life
Phelps was very athletic and played what was then the new game of baseball as well as golf and lawn tennis.

William Lyon Phelps (January 2 1865 New Haven Connecticut – August 21 1943 New Haven Connecticut) was an American author critic and scholar. He was a well-known speaker who drew large crowds. He taught the first American university course on the modern novel.