“the better half of Criticism, namely the pointing out an Author's excellencies.”

Arguing that criticism should recognise excellence rather than merely expose faults · Preface to Shakespeare, 1725

• Criticism
• Literature
• Respect

“They tend to hurl this poet into the gaping pit that lies before all Negro writers, in the confines of which they become racial artists instead of artists pure and simple.”

Warns that a solely racial pose can trap a writer short of the universal · Review of Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues, The Dark Tower, 1926

• Artists
• Criticism
• Race

“I have to thank it, for that kind of reception which is best calculated to make a work go on well—praise mixed with a considerable portion of censure.”

She valued mixed criticism as healthier than unmixed praise · To the Reader, Plays on the Passions, volume two, 1802

• Criticism
• Humility
• Writing

“Many a clever boy is flogged into a dunce, and many an original composition corrected into mediocrity.”

Criticising education and editing that suppress natural ability · Journal, 29 June 1826

• Criticism
• Education
• Originality

“I never wrote a poem which you could not persuade me to tear to pieces if you took me at the right moment!”

Revealing the severe self-doubt that could follow the exhilaration of composition · Letter to Robert Browning, 20 March 1845

• Criticism
• Humility
• Poetry

“Manufactured poetry seldom withstands the test of analysis.”

A critic's warning against verse assembled for effect · Book, Some Contemporary Poets, 1920

• Criticism
• Poetry
• Sincerity

“A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like Newton investigating the motions of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas.”

A comic metaphor for the practical and opportunistic nature of textual criticism · Lecture, The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism, 1921

• Criticism
• Humour
• Metaphor

“It is no good for a rhinoceros to hunt for fleas: he does not know where they are, and could not catch them if he did.”

A comic image for the importance of sensitivity and aptitude · Lecture, The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism, 1921

• Criticism
• Humour
• Skill

“If a dog hunted for fleas on mathematical principles, basing his researches on statistics of area and population, he would never catch a flea except by accident.”

Mocking rigid method when observation and judgement are what a problem requires · Lecture, The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism, 1921

• Criticism
• Humour
• Reason

“And, Mr. Sneering Critic, you certainly cannot disturb my peace of mind with your gibes and taunts unless you have my co-operation.”

Arguing that criticism gains power only when one allows it to do so · Prose writing quoted in Outlook and Independent, 1930

• Criticism
• Independence
• Peace

“Shakespeare, who at his best is the best of all poets, at his worst is almost the worst.”

A striking judgement on the extraordinary unevenness Housman perceived in Shakespeare · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

• Criticism
• Literature
• Poetry

“I am not so obstinate that I will not, at the first warning of a learned, unpassionate man well versed in poetry, receive every friendly correction.”

Original: Et ne suis point si opiniastre, que je ne vueille au premier admonnestement d'un homme docte, non passionné, et bien versé en la poësie, recevoir toute amiable correction. — Openness to criticism from those who know the craft · Preface to the second edition of La Franciade (French)

• Criticism
• Humility
• Learning

“At present the shepherd should not be in the van, unless his eye for grass be very keen; he will be in danger of being left in somewhat ignominious isolation. He must guide indeed, but he must guide from behind.”

Advising a subtle and responsive approach to literary criticism and guidance · Essay, The Pen, 1881

• Criticism
• Guidance
• Humility

“Where the narrative is highly colored by emotion, the ballad merges into the lyric. It is difficult here to draw the line of distinction.”

Recognising how literary forms naturally overlap when narrative becomes intensely emotional · Introduction to Ballad Book

• Criticism
• Emotion
• Poetry

“It is the superficial belief of some critics that American poetry has its ideal and embodiment in Walt Whitman.”

Warning against reducing a national poetic tradition to a single representative figure · Introduction, Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1921

• Criticism
• Poetry
• Tradition

“Criticism is the attempt to define and enjoy the aesthetic or characteristic values of literature.”

He defines criticism as an act of both understanding and enjoyment rather than mere information gathering. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

• Criticism
• Literature
• Pleasure

“I fear he does not like the book.”

A brief glimpse of Joyce’s sensitivity to Ezra Pound’s response to Ulysses. · Letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver, 1919

• Anxiety
• Criticism
• Writing

“That seems to me a harsh but not unjust description.”

Joyce’s willingness to accept criticism is tempered by his characteristic irony. · Letter to George Antheil, 3 January 1931

• Criticism
• Humility
• Writing

“Not until he is dead, and perhaps some long time dead, is it possible for the public to take his exact measure.”

Suggesting that lasting literary judgement requires distance from contemporary reputation · Ponkapog Papers, Leaves from a Note Book (1903)

• Criticism
• Fame
• Time

“That any man should seriously declare against that divine art is really amazing.”

Poetry defended as a divine art against fashionable contempt · Preface to Winter, 1726

• Art
• Criticism
• Poetry

“I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.”

Making ruthless self-editing central to good writing · Preface to The Works of Alexander Pope, 1717

• Criticism
• Discipline
• Writing

“It's awfully hard to talk or write about your own stuff because if it is any good you yourself know about how good it is.”

Explaining the awkwardness writers face when judging or discussing their own work · Letter to Malcolm Cowley, 17 October 1945

• Criticism
• Humility
• Writing

“My first book was The Heart of a Woman. It was not at all race-conscious. Then some one said—she has no feeling for the race. So I wrote Bronze—it is entirely racial.”

Recounts how public criticism pushed her from lyric womanhood to racial subject matter · Letter to Arna Bontemps, 1941

• Criticism
• Race
• Writing

“The critic is surely himself a literary creator, and his work starts with a spontaneous surge of piety, and is inducted by the contagion of art into a composition of his own.”

He gives literary criticism a creative dignity, describing the critic as an artist responding to art. · Essay, Criticism, Inc.

• Art
• Creation
• Criticism