Lionel Trilling

Lionel Trilling

Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) was an American literary critic, author, and University Professor at Columbia University. Among the most influential of his many works are two collections of essays, The Liberal Imagination and The Opposing Self; a critical study of E.M. Forster; and one novel, The Middle of the Journey.

From the Review

April 17, 1975: Whittaker Chambers and 'The Middle of the Journey'

June 29, 1972: Crisis in the NY Public Library (letter)

November 17, 1966: The Sad Fate of Lenny Bruce (letter)

From New York Review Books

The Liberal Imagination The great critic's masterwork makes a case for the necessity of the imaginative works in a society ever more worshipful of the liberal ideals of rationality and progress. "Trilling...shows how criticism, written with grace, style, and a self-questioning cast of mind, can itself become a form of literature, as well as a valuable contribution to how we think about society.—Morris Dickstein

The Middle of the Journey Published in 1947, as the cold war was heating up, Lionel Trilling’s only novel was a prophetic reckoning with the bitter ideological disputes that were to come to a head in the McCarthy era.