“... sincerely wants to be rich. A Spanish treasure ship, traced to the correct Caribbean reef after a self-educating search through the libraries of two continents, gives him his desire, and on the way, the women – still somewhat older than the hero – that seem appropriate to his education. In the second half of the book Mark, who seems to have learnt less ...”

“... sophistication and agility than most Hardy critics are capable of, would begin from the surely self-evident proposition that great poets don’t have to be good men; that Hardy may have been, as it seems he was, a lousy husband, but that he may have been a great poet all the same. For this defence to work, it has to be shown that Hardy’s lack of ...”

“... a rebuke to liberalism’s recent retreat ‘into a deadening private and individual care for the self’. Religious intensity is not new, then, to American politics. But the present convergence of politics and religion is, Colombo believes, unprecedented and deeply alarming. Although the new Christian Right began gathering strength shortly after World War ...”

“... out of the visit. He sums it up: ‘The patriarch and his piles, a grandfather wounded in his self-esteem by his grand daughter! The mother more bitter than anxious, the father no more concerned than the others, the educated son, smoothing things down and persuading everyone to do nothing.’ He has missed the entire point of the domestic crisis ...”

“... consistently lively.’ This is pure Dryasdust, a pretended apology masking the author’s self-satisfaction. There are other Scottish characteristics in Augustus. The hero has a slave, called Septimus, a bonnie laddie from the Sabine Hills, ‘with ungrammatical Latin and long vowel sounds’, who recalls the despondent Augustus to his duty by ...”

“... sandwiches and minks. In too many other respects, though, she really is liberated from her former self. She has a son called Gregory, whose upbringing is dealt with as briskly as her marriage was, and it is only when he starts building model aeroplanes (not very well) that we are asked to take much interest in him. The focus at this stage is on the altered ...”

“... pursue the same career, that of literature. Up writing at four or five, the father endures a self-punishing regime and refuses to involve his family in his ‘creations’ (children, as he thinks of them) except when indulging his monstrous ego. Once you offered me your clippings file – the human touch! What next: a translator’s essays, a printed ...”

“... may be even now discussing them; and however engrossing, such a mutuality is both dangerous and self-limiting. True gossip should not only offer a state of perfect relaxation but of perfect ignorance as well, with only imagination to do the work. At which point what should fall into one’s lap but the most perfect gossip book imaginable: perfect, that is ...”

“... impulses (‘caring ... compassionate’) must be made fun of if they are not to seem intolerably self-righteous: and yet he gives those things their real due with unemphatic force. One of the best things the book does and gives is the sense in which old devils feel warm for each other and try to look after each other, with a little help from the young: so ...”

“... it make any mark in the world of fiction. (Her earlier book of poetry, notable in no way, had been self-published.) At college and afterwards, she had written stories about pioneer life, but she saw no special value in that subject-matter until the Maine regional writer, Sarah Orne Jewett (whom she came to know in Boston while she was researching articles for ...”

“... form to tell a story of contemporary Californian life would have daunted a less determined and self-assured writer – though at least ‘Onegin’ can be rhymed with ‘Reagan’: How can I (careless of time) use The dusty bread molds of Onegin In the brave bakery of Reagan? The answer is that he can, and does. The chief characteristic of Pushkin’s ...”

“... is some third thing which makes sentences true; nor does anti-realism. In accordance with his self-description, Davidson falls squarely on the realist side of this dispute. If he did not, he would not take truth as primitive for the reasons he does. He would regard a wedding of truth with warranted assertibility as made in heaven. Part of the reason he ...”

“... In particular, he praises Baldwin’s careful fostering of Labour, which was done partly from self-interest (socialists made easier targets than Liberals) but partly also from a disinterested desire to provide a constitutional context for inevitable social change. Certainly, however culpable Baldwin may have been of ‘putting party before country’ in ...”

“... doubt that the wonderfully monstrous Gertrude in Pictures from an Institution, is really a kind of self-portrait, like Flaubert’s of Madame Bovary, based on Jarrell’s knowledge of his own will. At the same time there is something extremely likeable about him, and his need to give and receive affection, and this comes through in all the letters. Marianne ...”

“... about Matilda’s mould-breaking political roles? Given the Norman propensity for rebellion and self-interest, it was a bold decision on William’s part to leave Matilda as regent of Normandy while he pursued his invasion of England; she seems to have held things together very competently. It’s perhaps significant that stress was laid on her own separate ...”