“... the continuing democratic vigour of the American novel is that the great wave of Modernism was no more than a ripple by the time it reached New England’s shores. American writers simply did not have the time or energy to spare for all that self-scrutiny and existential doubt, that Eliotian difficulty. There was a job to be done, in that the young nation was ...”

“... with Aristotle’s distinction, and notes its influence on Catholic theology. But he overlooks a more interesting theological aspect of the accidental, which is the doctrine of Creation. This has nothing to do with how the world got started, which is the domain of the scientist. It has to do with the fact that for Christian belief, everything in the world ...”

“... least a chance that in forming this image your imagination will have tapped into a picture that is more than five hundred years old – Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of the outlandish pachyderm, made in 1515. Dürer himself never saw a rhino. He too had to imagine the beast, so your imaginings might have something to do with his imaginings, which ‘bodied forth ...”

“... murals to challenge the prevailing narrative of Washington’s life and, indeed, American history more broadly. His murals were intended to show that the country’s economic growth and territorial expansion – Washington took part in both – rested on the exploitation of slave labour and the violent seizure of Native American land. Among ...”

“... in South Wales and the London-based group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. It’s a far more optimistic portrayal of activism and agency than earlier movies about the dispute, such as Billy Elliot (2000), in which the son of a Durham miner flees poverty and cultural conservatism to perform in the West End.In an essay published just after the ...”

“... But while Byron was disowned by the Victorians, embarrassed that this ‘huge sulky dandy’, as Thomas Carlyle called him, should have received so much adoration and respect, Felicia Hemans’s reputation grew, and her work went out of print only after the First World War. Her importance in dictating the taste for patriotism, obedience and sacrifice in ...”

“... at least – white. But most women philosophers before the late 20th century needed something more: access to a man who held the uncommon view that women – or at least certain women – could be serious thinkers too. The odds were long. For centuries, philosophers hammered prejudice into reason. Aristotle’s claim that in women reason was ‘not ...”

“... when assembled together, would magically turn into a collective theory of literature, seems more detached from reality than is usual even in discussions of the politics of ‘theory’. Kernan’s argument is as reductive and incoherent in general as it is inaccurate and incoherent in detail. To call it tendentious would be to ascribe to it a ...”

“... books about Ulysses, mentioning only two previous ones by himself. He weeds out bad ideas and adds more promising ones, always with acknowledgement to other critics: and it is impressive that he had plenty more material available for the centenary collection, A Starchamber Quiry, just after printing his own book. He puts a ...”

“... Royal Academy, only a few years after its founding in 1768; and it was there that he may have met Thomas Rowlandson, the other outstanding caricaturist of his generation.Alice Loxton spins her exuberant popular history around that friendship, and calls on their mutual friend Henry Angelo for testimony on Gillray’s early mastery: ‘The facility with which ...”

“... to please. And, though Jane Austen may not have dwelt in the best of all possible worlds, it was a more congenial corner of a more congenial world than most. Even a reader who leans towards opinions like these must regret the absence of a more closely reasoned case. The ...”

“... Moore who sang his praises, but other, very different kinds of poet too: Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, Octavio Paz, Louis Zukofsky and Charles Olson. As did any number of critics: Edmund Wilson, Harry Levin, Jacques Barzun, Lionel Trilling, Guy Davenport. Were all of them hornswoggled, taken in by the surface polish and acrobatics of Cummings’s style ...”

“... The Founding Fathers of the United States were mainly Southerners: between them, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison can take credit for drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, winning the Revolutionary War, and preserving America’s independence through its turbulent early decades ...”

“... delights to be found in Roger Lonsdale’s New Oxford Book of 18th-Century Verse is a squib by Thomas Holcroft, provoked by some disparaging remarks Voltaire made about Shakespeare. In fact, Voltaire was perfectly ready to concede that Shakespeare was possessed of real genius, though of a rough and ready kind, but in denying that he had ‘so much as a ...”

“... if not with the tactless first biographer or with the vindictive and family-proud nephew then with Thomas Carlyle or with Jane, or perhaps with Carlyle with reservations, or against him with no reservations at all. Froude gets the blame for striking the first blow, directed against the friend who had trusted him to do the right thing by his life and ...”