“... the novelists of the rest of the American continent – but the desire to announce some hitherto unknown contender to the world is readily understandable. What is obvious, however, is that Harold Brodkey is not the great missing genius. If anything, he wrote rather better in the days before some people began to mistake him for one. Back in the Fifties he ...”

“... Like the scientist, with whom he had much in common (and was often identical), the explorer of the unknown areas of the globe was determined to describe or portray the tangible external reality instead of treating nature as a playground for his emotions. Similarly a child of 17th-century empiricism, the travel writer was at his most comfortable with the ...”

“... farmers through their compulsory marketing schemes, achieving a measure of control and discipline unknown in England. At least one blot was removed from the fair name of Ulster: its exports of eggs and bacon ceased to excite the contempt of the housewives of England. But how much more might have been done but for the moral cowardice of politicians and the ...”

“... of an analogous sort.’ Or Mach in 1895: ‘The disclosure of new provinces of facts before unknown can only be brought about by accidental circumstances … From the teeming, swelling host of fancies which a free and high-flown imagination calls forth, suddenly that particular form arises to the light which harmonises perfectly with the ruling ...”

“... in the material sense, more to give. When Nabokov arrived in New York in 1940 he was virtually unknown outside émigré Russian circles, but Wilson had been for years an important critical voice, and had a well-deserved reputation as a defender and expositor of new writing. Axel’s Castle had long been famous; To the Finland Station appeared in ...”

“... explain why Leskov, a writer with claims to be regarded as Tolstoy’s or Dostoevsky’s equal, is unknown outside Russia. Here, however, the dialogue is not so specifically Russian as to be untranslatable: that, perhaps, is the weakness of the story, in that the situation could be that of a Molière play or a Wodehouse novel. Ignat Avsey’s ear is usually ...”

“... along with suitcases? I suppose the answer is to stay at home. Devon and Cornwall were almost unknown country to me, which is slightly shame-making. Plymouth has an attractive position and a character all its own, provided by centuries of the Navy, which still dominates Plymouth though it has now few ships. Dominant personality is still Lady Astor, with ...”

“... lunch and later in a festive tea. Altogether a delightful occasion, an excursion into territory as unknown to me as if it had been Tierra del Fuego. We spent a couple of nights at Rainhill, yet another local authority in the district and famous for the locomotive trials in 1830. There is also a Roman Catholic church without windows which I failed to visit ...”

“... Simpson’s own way of alluding to without committing the vulgarity of telling a story: shadowy, unknown figures (including, tactfully, himself) are seen to do this and that. Occasionally, but much less than in the more Whitmanesque exploration of his American subject in the past, he offers a reflection on life: Yet nothing in nature changes, from that day ...”

“... of herpes. The reality is much less alarming. Herpes is not a new, or recently discovered, or unknown disease, nor is it sweeping through the populations of Europe and North America like one of the plagues of Egypt. In Britain it is one of the less common of the sexually-transmitted dieseases – between ten and 12 thousand patients with herpes are seen ...”

“... re-creates a world in which artists possessed powers, or at least served vital practical purposes, unknown to them today. His claim is that this changed because art came more and more to be cherished for its own sake. This is no doubt correct, but his generalisations need the sort of qualification which would come from considering more evidence. Something ...”

“... it than are dreamt about in Dworkin’s philosophy, and stooping to conquer has not exactly been unknown. To try to present women as nothing other than powerless victims is a historico-sociological nonsense which profoundly degrades women. Maybe Dworkin is telling women that sex itself is slavery, a ‘self-mutilation’. Maybe female ‘desire’ is just a ...”

“... that most men dislike Felix, ‘especially married men and homosexuals’. Clover’s mother is unknown to the daughter for her first few years: in fact, she is the wife of a prosperous dentist and art-collector, very careful about her security. She had a fling with Jason and dumped the baby on him. Eleanor, living with Jason, begins to feel motherly toward ...”

“... later, ‘when almost overcome by the ague had I crawled into the forest and been rewarded by some unknown and beautiful species!’ How could he bear their loss, let alone set out again soon afterwards on the hunt? At this point I hesitate between thinking of him as mad or heroic. Something like the buzz of discovery that McGavin and his colleagues can still ...”

“... mistake. He was raising a perfectly sensible question (to which, by the way, the answer is still unknown). In a nutshell: Wittgenstein thought that meaning is somehow a matter of use; Putnam raises the ante by understanding ‘use’ anthropologically, as the totality of a word’s (concept’s) ‘entanglements’ with how we speak, think and live. Thus ...”