I’m not sure why “debate” needs to be in quotes. Virginia Woolf called it a craft in 1937
and of course, a working writer can’t subsist on a few generous patrons-- the dream is to be able to sell ones work to a mass audience. It’s this commercial appeal that separated Fine art from craft in the first place. One can have need of a dining room table, and want it to be beautiful, which is a different sort of instinct than commissioning a piece of sculpture. In the same way, magazine editors were always in need of beuatiful things that filled column inches.
