Common Reading: Critics, Historians, Publics
by Stefan Collini (Oxford University Press, £25)
Surveying the “railway stalls” where the modern reader bought his literature in 1855, Walter Bagehot observed that a large space was filled by the “review-like essay and the essay-like review.” The best examples of this genre were couched in an unbuttoned, digressive style, more like the “talk of the man of the world” than the “lecture of a professor.”
As Stefan Collini points out in Common Reading: Critics, Historians, Publics, itself a collection of review-like essays and essay-like reviews, Bagehot’s attitude to “review writing” was actually more ambivalent than this makes it sound. He regarded reviewing as something “able men” fell into rather than chose as a vocation and looked back longingly at the “old days of systematic arguments and regular discussion.”
If you are a subscriber, please log in »
This article is available to subscribers only
Subscribing to Prospect is the most reliable and convenient way to receive the magazine every month, and offers the best value.Subscription Types:
Online
An online subscription offers you complete and unlimited access to the entire website, including our searchable archive of every back issue of Prospect, and a PDF edition of each new issue: all this for just £20 per year. Purchase an online subscription »Renewal
Renew an existing subscription »Institutional access
If you are a library, business organisation or any other large institution that needs a multi-user licence, you can obtain institutional access.
Share
Subscribe to post comments
Print
