Walter A. Dyer: I have read studiously both modern authors and the classics, and have got more inspiration from the latter.
Walter Richard Eaton: Nobody can say for me, I'd answer. One learns much of his "craft" (in both senses!) from a study of his market, the magazines. That is, he adapts the size (length) of his story, etc., to the editorial demands.
E. O. Foster: I have been an "omnivorous reader" all my life, the dictionary and encyclopedia being my favorite works.
Arthur O. Friel: Nearly all from current writers.
J. U. Giesy: All of it except what I have worked out myself. Have been a somewhat omnivorous reader all my life.
George Gilbert: No author can answer that, for he does not know himself.
Kenneth Gilbert: Current authors have been very helpful; classics scarcely at all.
Holworthy Hall: If I have learned anything at all about any "craft," I have learned it from Leonard Merrick, Mary Rinehart and Theophile Gautier.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I've probably learned a lot from reading current authors. Couldn't quite say how or what; and people who read me may doubt the above proposition. The danger of watching the tricks of a contemporary consists in liability to ape him in your own stuff, especially if he is a powerful contemporary. We have with us all the time young shadow-forms of Kipling, O. Henry, etc. I dogged Conrad nearly to my undoing. A man with some writing instinct can pick up the mannerisms of another writer as easily as butter absorbs a taint. The danger from reading the classics is less, and such reading is probably worth more to a man.
William H. Hamby: Not consciously from either: although I know I must have benefited from both, especially modern writers.