American literature did not begin in restraint—it began in excess. In the nineteenth century, it excelled at the fantastic, ...

THIS work, 1 in the opening volumes of which we found such unusual interest, has increased in usefulness with each successive issue, and now in its total of eleven large volumes opens as complete a ...

In the nineteen-thirties and forties, young book critics on the make used to crowd outside the office of Malcolm Cowley, the literary editor of The New Republic, in the hopes of his attention.