Volume 50, Number 9 · May 29, 2003
A New Victorian
By James Fenton
Reviewery
by Christopher Ricks
Handsel, 386 pp., $30.00
Selected Poems of James Henry
edited by Christopher Ricks
Handsel, 180 pp., $22.00
Fifty reviews from the last four decades, dealing largely with writers from the twentieth century—reviews written for newspapers and magazines, and shading off a little in the direction of learned journals: journalism, in fact, and written for the most part to short deadlines. This, by Christopher Ricks, is the best journalism of its kind. Occasionally—but how astonishingly seldom—one feels sorry that, for instance, a coupling of books that was convenient for an editor has shaped an argument in an unfruitful way. Ricks reviewed Cyril Connolly's journal along with the letters of J.B. Yeats, the poet's father. He hates Connolly and loves the elder Yeats, but the comparisons between the two men are, though no doubt justly drawn, hardly of great moment, whereas the comparison lightly touched on, between J.B. and W.B. Yeats, is suggestive.
Review, 3528 words
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