THERE are five groups interested in literary criticism: publishers of books, authors, publishers of reviews, critics, and, finally, the reading public. An obvious interest of all the groups but the ...

Of the character sketches that the English satirist Samuel Butler wrote in the mid-seventeenth century—among them “A Degenerate Noble,” “A Huffing Courtier,” “A Small Poet,” and “A Romance Writer”—the ...

For years, the writer flirted and exchanged ideas with Amélie Bosquet—until her ideas threatened his work. Criticism has a way of surviving without infrastructure, but there is no replacement for ...