Volume 1, Number 7 · November 28, 1963
Old Moderns
By R.P. Blackmur
Eight Modern Writers
by J.I.M. Stewart
Oxford, 704 pp., $11.00
Mr. Stewart's book is, of course, by way of being the twelfth and final volume in the Oxford History of English Literature But it is only so by the way. It does have some hundred-odd pages of chronology, bibliography, and index; but it is not elsewhere furnished with the signs of scholarship, historical or otherwise. There are no footnotes and no headnotes. There is no account of bad writers and bad writing, which is to the good; but there is no account, either, of all those writers whom it would be fun to read if only we knew about them or were reminded of them. There are allusions: we hear that C. P. Snow is the Galsworthy of our time; but there is not much more. Perhaps Mr. Stewart is leaving to his alter ego, Michael Innes, the task of recovering for the avid reader all those readable writers who were ephemeral only in the instance. If not Michael Innes, then a new George Saintsbury, or anyone prejudiced by the succession of his delightsand vast in his labors.
Review, 2026 words
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