Books

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.

A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.

Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.

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… More

The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society

– New York: Viking Press, 1950.

Summary: “The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.

Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

Sherwood Anderson

– "Sherwood Anderson." Kenyon Review 3, No. 3 (Summer 1941): 293-302. When published in The Liberal Imagination, Trilling added some matter from The New York Times Book Review, November 9, 1947.

Excerpt: I find it hard, and I think it would be false, to write of Sherwood Anderson without speaking of him personally and even emotionally. I did not know him; I was in his company only… More

Freud and Literature

– "Freud and Literature." Originally published as "The Legacy of Sigmund Freud, Part 2: Literary and Aesthetic." Kenyon Review 2, No. 2 (Spring 1940): 152-73. A revised version appeared in Horizon, September 1947.

Excerpt, from Horizon: The Freudian psychology is the only systematic account of the human mind whch, in point of subtlety and complexity, of interest and tragic power, deserves to stand… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Function of the Little Magazine

– "The Function of the Little Magazine." Introduction to The Partisan Reader: Ten Years of Partisan Review, 1933-1944: An Anthology. Edited by William Phillips and Philip Rahv. New York: The Dial Press, 1946.

Excerpt: The Partisan Reader may be thought of as an ambiguous monument. It commemorates a victory—Partisan Review has survived for a decade, and has survived with a vitality of which the… More

Huckleberry Finn

– "Huckleberry Finn." Introduction Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1876 Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and in the same year began what he called “another boys’ book.” He set little store by the new venture and said that… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.

Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

A Note on Art and Neurosis

– "A Note on Art and Neurosis." The Partisan Review, Winter 1945. Some new material appeared in The New Leader, December 13, 1947.

Excerpt: The question of the mental health of the artist has engaged the attention of our culture since the beginning of the Romantic Movement. Before that time it was commonly said that… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.

Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

F. Scott Fitzgerald

– "F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Nation, April 25, 1945. Also the introduction, with added material, to The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: New Directions, 1945.

Excerpt: It is not what we may fittingly say on all tragic occasions, but the original occasion for these words is strikingly apt to Fitzgerald. Like Milton’s Samson, he had the… More

Art and Fortune

– "Art and Fortune." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1948. First published in Partisan Review, December 1948.

The Meaning of a Literary Idea

– "The Meaning of a Literary Idea." Paper read at the Conference in American Literature at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, February 1949. First published in The American Quarterly, Fall 1949.

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.

Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters

– "The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters." Originally published as the introduction to The Selected Letters of John Keats, New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951.

Excerpt: “We cannot understand Keats’s mind without a very full awareness of what powers of enjoyment he had and of how freely he licensed those powers. The pleasure of the… More

Little Dorrit

– "Litte Dorrit." Kenyon Review 15, No. 4 (Autumn, 1953): 577-59.

Excerpt: Little Dorrit is one of the three great novels of Dickens’ great last period, but of the three it is perhaps the least established with modern readers. When it first… More

Anna Karenina

– "Anna Karenina." Originally published as the introduction to "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, revised Constance Garnett translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951).

William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste

– "William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste." Partisan Review 18 (September-October 1951): 516-36.

Excerpt: Every now and then in the past few years we have heard that we might soon expect a revival of interest in the work of William Dean Howells. And certainly, if this rumor were… More

The Bostonians

– "The Bostonians." Originally published as the introduction to The Bostonians by Henry James (London: John Lehmann, 1953).

Wordsworth and the Rabbis

– First delivered as a lecture at Princeton University at a conference on William Wordsworth, Princeton, NJ, April 21, 1950. First published as "Wordsworth and the Iron Time." Kenyon Review 12, No. 3 (Summer 1950): 477-497.

Excerpt: Our meeting here to do honor to William Wordsworth will have its counterparts in academic centers in all the English-speaking countries. But we can scarcely suppose that in the… More

Flaubert’s Last Testament

– "Flaubert's Last Testament." Partisan Review 20 (November-December 1953): 605-630.

Mansfield Park

– "Mansfield Park." Partisan Review 21 (September-October 1954): 492-511. Also published in Encounter, September 1954: 9-19.

Excerpt: Sooner or later, when we speak of Jane Austen, we speak of her irony, and it is better to speak of it sooner rather than later because nothing can so far mislead us about her work… More

Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination

– Frank, Joseph. "Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination." Sewanee Review, Spring 1956. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: The career and reputation of Lionel Trilling as a literary critic pose something of an anomaly. Not, we should hasten to add, that Mr. Trilling does not deserve all the encomiums… More

A Gathering of Fugitives

– Boston: Beacon Press, 1956.

Summary: “Writings on general cultural issues accompany discussions of such authors as Edith Wharton, Robert Graves, C. P. Snow, and Charles Dickens.” Contents: The Great Aunt… More

The Morality of Inertia

– “The Morality of Inertia.” Essay in Great Moral Dilemmas in Literature, Past and Present, edited by Robert MacIver (New York: Harper and Bros., 1956).

Excerpt: A theological seminary in New York planned a series of lectures on “The Literary Presentations of Great Moral Issues,” and invited me to give one of the talks. Since I have a… More

On the Teaching of Modern Literature

– First published as “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature.” Partisan Review, January-February 1961.

Excerpt: And since my own interests lead me to see literary situations as cultural situations, and cultural situations as great elaborate fights about moral issues, and moral issues as… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.

Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).

Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

Isaac Babel

– First published as the introduction to Isaac Babel: The Collected Stories, edited by Walter Morison (New York: Criterion Books, Inc., 1955). Also published as "Isaac Babel: Torn Between Violence and Peace" in Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: A good many years ago, in 1929, I chanced to read a book which disturbed me in a way I can still remember. The book was called Red Cavalry; it was a collection of stories about… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Hawthorne in Our Time

– Originally published as “Our Hawthorne” in Hawthorne Centenary Essays, edited by Roy Harvey Pearce (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964). Also published in Partisan Review, Summer 1964.

Excerpt: Henry James’s monograph on Hawthorne must always have a special place in American letters, if only because, as Edmund Wilson observed, it is the first extended study ever to… More

The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English

– “The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English.” Paper read as The Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture at Newnham College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, February 20, 1965. Revised and published in Encounter, July 1965.

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.

Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

The Experience of Literature: A Reader with Commentaries

– Edited by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

This anthology contains a selection of great literary works along with Trilling’s expert and incisive prefaces to each. The prefaces were ultimately gathered and published without… More

Prefaces to The Experience of Literature

– New York: Harcourt, 1967.

Summary: “Introductions to works by authors as varied as Sophocles, Hemingway, Blake, Lawrence, and Lowell, all of which appeared originally in Trilling’s unique anthology, are… More

Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader

– Edited with a Preface and Introduction by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

This anthology contains an introduction published as an essay in The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975.

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

The Oxford Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Poetry and Prose

– Edited by Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

This volume devotes over 100 pages to William Blake, including The Book of Thel and the entire “Night the Ninth” from The Four Zoas, as well as excerpts… More

Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling

– Scott, Jr., Nathan A. Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

“Of This Time, Of That Place” and Other Stories

– Trilling, Diana, compiler. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Five modern stories reveal the imagination and sensitivity of a preeminent literary critic toward the plight of the mentally ill and racial, religious, and economic… More

A Novel of the Thirties

– Originally published as "Young in the Thirties." Commentary 41 (May 1966): 43-51.

Excerpt: “In the 1950’s it was established beyond question that the 1930’s had not simply passed into history but had become history.”

James Joyce in His Letters

– Review of Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2 and 3, edited by Richard Ellman (New York: Viking, 1968). Commentary 45 (February 1968): 54-64.

Excerpt: In 1935, near the end of a long affectionate letter to his son George in America, James Joyce wrote: “Here I conclude. My eyes are tired. For over half a… More

What is Criticism?

– "What is Criticism?" Introduction to Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader, edited and with prefaces by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Aggression and Utopia

– "Aggression and Utopia." Originally published as "Aggression and Utopia: A Note on William Morris's 'News from Nowhere.'" Psychoanalytic Quarterly 42 (April 1973): 214-25.

Whittaker Chambers’ Journey

– "Whittaker Chambers' Journey." Times Saturday Review (London), April 5, 1975, 5, 9.

Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture

– "Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture." An unfinished memoir, intended to be given as a lecture at Purdue University.

The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975

– Ed. Diana Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Pieces written during the last ten years of Trilling’s life include important statements on Joyce, Austen, and Freud, a probing investigation of modern art, a memoir… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

Another Jewish Problem Novel

– "Another Jewish Problem Novel." Review of The Disinherited, by Milton Waldman (New York: Longmans, Green, 1929). Menorah Journal 16 (April 1929): 376-79.

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect

– "D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect." Symposium 1 (July 1930): 361-70.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.

Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions

– "The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions." Partisan Review 6 (Fall 1939): 108-12.

Hemingway and his Critics

– "Hemingway and his Critics." Review of The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, by Earnest Hemingway (New York: Scribner's, 1938). Partisan Review 6 (Winter 1939): 52-60.

Literature and Power

– "Literature and Power." Kenyon Review 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1940): 433-42.

T.S. Eliot’s Politics

– "T.S. Eliot's Politics." First published as "Elements that are Wanted." Review of The Idea of a Christian Society, by T.S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939). Partisan Review 7 (September-October 1940): 367-79.

Excerpt: It is a century ago this year that John Stuart Mill angered his Benthamite friends by his now famous essay on Coleridge in which, writing sympathetically of a religious and… More

Under Forty

– "Under Forty." Originally published as "Under Forty: A Symposium on American Literature and the Younger Generation of American Jews." Contemporary Jewish Record 6 (February 1944). Trilling's contribution pp. 15-17.

The Head and Heart of Henry James

– "The Head and Heart of Henry James." Review of Henry James: The Major Phase, by F.O. Matthiessen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944). New York Times Book Review, November 26, 1944, 3.

The Problem of Influence

– "The Problem of Influence." Review of Freudianism and the Literary Mind, Frederick J. Hoffman (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1945). Nation 161 (September 8, 1945): 234.

Literary Pathology

– "Literary Pathology." Lecture given at the American Psychoanalytic Association, December 7, 1962.

Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism

– Krupnick, Mark. Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1986.

Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation

– O'Hara, Daniel T. Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling

– Trilling, Diana. The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography

– Leitch, Thomas M. Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993.

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode

– “A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode.” Partisan Review 26 (Summer 1959): 445-52.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.

Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.

Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.

Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling

– Heilbrun, Carolyn G. When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.

Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.

Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.

Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe: And Other Stories of Literary Friendship

– Alexander, Edward. Lionel Trilling & Irving Howe: and other stories of literary friendship. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009.

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind

– Kimmage, Michael. “Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind.” New York Times, November 3, 2011.

Excerpt: As Kirsch writes, paraphrasing Trilling’s perspective, “Art is the form in which the writer, and through him the reader, can face down the intolerable contradictions of… More

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.

Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.

Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

Tragedy and Three Novels

– “Tragedy and Three Novels.” Review of A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Scribner’s, 1929); Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1930); The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1929). Symposium 1 (January 1930): 106-14.

Eugene O’Neill

– “Eugene O’Neill.” New Republic 88 (23 September 1936): 376-79.

Matthew Arnold, Poet

– “Matthew Arnold, Poet.” Major British Writers. Edited by G.B. Harrison. 2 volumes. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1954. 2: 419-32.

A version of this essay is in the paperback edition of Trilling’s Matthew Arnold.

Beautiful and Blest

– “Beautiful and Blest.” Review of Great English Short Novels, edited by Cyril Conolly (New York: Dial, 1953); Great French Short Novels, edited by Frederick W. Dupee (New York: Dial, 1952); and Great Russian Short Novels, edited by Philip Rahv (New York: Dial, 1951). Mid-Century 30 (September 1961): 3-9.

Rimbaudelaire

– “Rimbaudelaire.” Review of Arthur Rimbaud, third edition, by Enid Starkie (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1961); and Baudelaire, by Enid Starkie (New York: New Directions, 1958). Mid-Century 34 (December 1961): 3-10.

Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature

– “Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature.” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 64 (7 July 1962): 739-42.

The Wheel

– “The Wheel.” Review of Down There on a Visit, by Christopher Isherwood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962); and  An Official Rose, by Iris Murdoch (New York: Viking, 1962). Mid-Century 41 (July 1962): 5-10.

James Baldwin

– “James Baldwin.” Review of Another Country, by James Baldwin (New York: Dial, 1962). Mid-Century 44 (September 1962): 5-11.

William Wordsworth

– “William Wordsworth.” Atlantic Brief Lives, edited by Louis Kronenberger (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown, 1971). 882-84.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Trilling’s Matthew Arnold

– Barzun, Jacques. "Trilling's Matthew Arnold." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. Columbia University Quarterly, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: “The Critic’s business is to carp; the scholar’s business is to bore.” No one, of course, has the courage to honor those maxims in words, but many of us… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More

Essays

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.

A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.

Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.

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… More

The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society

– New York: Viking Press, 1950.

Summary: “The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.

Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

Sherwood Anderson

– "Sherwood Anderson." Kenyon Review 3, No. 3 (Summer 1941): 293-302. When published in The Liberal Imagination, Trilling added some matter from The New York Times Book Review, November 9, 1947.

Excerpt: I find it hard, and I think it would be false, to write of Sherwood Anderson without speaking of him personally and even emotionally. I did not know him; I was in his company only… More

Freud and Literature

– "Freud and Literature." Originally published as "The Legacy of Sigmund Freud, Part 2: Literary and Aesthetic." Kenyon Review 2, No. 2 (Spring 1940): 152-73. A revised version appeared in Horizon, September 1947.

Excerpt, from Horizon: The Freudian psychology is the only systematic account of the human mind whch, in point of subtlety and complexity, of interest and tragic power, deserves to stand… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Function of the Little Magazine

– "The Function of the Little Magazine." Introduction to The Partisan Reader: Ten Years of Partisan Review, 1933-1944: An Anthology. Edited by William Phillips and Philip Rahv. New York: The Dial Press, 1946.

Excerpt: The Partisan Reader may be thought of as an ambiguous monument. It commemorates a victory—Partisan Review has survived for a decade, and has survived with a vitality of which the… More

Huckleberry Finn

– "Huckleberry Finn." Introduction Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1876 Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and in the same year began what he called “another boys’ book.” He set little store by the new venture and said that… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.

Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

A Note on Art and Neurosis

– "A Note on Art and Neurosis." The Partisan Review, Winter 1945. Some new material appeared in The New Leader, December 13, 1947.

Excerpt: The question of the mental health of the artist has engaged the attention of our culture since the beginning of the Romantic Movement. Before that time it was commonly said that… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.

Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

F. Scott Fitzgerald

– "F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Nation, April 25, 1945. Also the introduction, with added material, to The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: New Directions, 1945.

Excerpt: It is not what we may fittingly say on all tragic occasions, but the original occasion for these words is strikingly apt to Fitzgerald. Like Milton’s Samson, he had the… More

Art and Fortune

– "Art and Fortune." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1948. First published in Partisan Review, December 1948.

The Meaning of a Literary Idea

– "The Meaning of a Literary Idea." Paper read at the Conference in American Literature at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, February 1949. First published in The American Quarterly, Fall 1949.

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.

Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters

– "The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters." Originally published as the introduction to The Selected Letters of John Keats, New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951.

Excerpt: “We cannot understand Keats’s mind without a very full awareness of what powers of enjoyment he had and of how freely he licensed those powers. The pleasure of the… More

Little Dorrit

– "Litte Dorrit." Kenyon Review 15, No. 4 (Autumn, 1953): 577-59.

Excerpt: Little Dorrit is one of the three great novels of Dickens’ great last period, but of the three it is perhaps the least established with modern readers. When it first… More

Anna Karenina

– "Anna Karenina." Originally published as the introduction to "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, revised Constance Garnett translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951).

William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste

– "William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste." Partisan Review 18 (September-October 1951): 516-36.

Excerpt: Every now and then in the past few years we have heard that we might soon expect a revival of interest in the work of William Dean Howells. And certainly, if this rumor were… More

The Bostonians

– "The Bostonians." Originally published as the introduction to The Bostonians by Henry James (London: John Lehmann, 1953).

Wordsworth and the Rabbis

– First delivered as a lecture at Princeton University at a conference on William Wordsworth, Princeton, NJ, April 21, 1950. First published as "Wordsworth and the Iron Time." Kenyon Review 12, No. 3 (Summer 1950): 477-497.

Excerpt: Our meeting here to do honor to William Wordsworth will have its counterparts in academic centers in all the English-speaking countries. But we can scarcely suppose that in the… More

Flaubert’s Last Testament

– "Flaubert's Last Testament." Partisan Review 20 (November-December 1953): 605-630.

Mansfield Park

– "Mansfield Park." Partisan Review 21 (September-October 1954): 492-511. Also published in Encounter, September 1954: 9-19.

Excerpt: Sooner or later, when we speak of Jane Austen, we speak of her irony, and it is better to speak of it sooner rather than later because nothing can so far mislead us about her work… More

Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination

– Frank, Joseph. "Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination." Sewanee Review, Spring 1956. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: The career and reputation of Lionel Trilling as a literary critic pose something of an anomaly. Not, we should hasten to add, that Mr. Trilling does not deserve all the encomiums… More

A Gathering of Fugitives

– Boston: Beacon Press, 1956.

Summary: “Writings on general cultural issues accompany discussions of such authors as Edith Wharton, Robert Graves, C. P. Snow, and Charles Dickens.” Contents: The Great Aunt… More

The Morality of Inertia

– “The Morality of Inertia.” Essay in Great Moral Dilemmas in Literature, Past and Present, edited by Robert MacIver (New York: Harper and Bros., 1956).

Excerpt: A theological seminary in New York planned a series of lectures on “The Literary Presentations of Great Moral Issues,” and invited me to give one of the talks. Since I have a… More

On the Teaching of Modern Literature

– First published as “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature.” Partisan Review, January-February 1961.

Excerpt: And since my own interests lead me to see literary situations as cultural situations, and cultural situations as great elaborate fights about moral issues, and moral issues as… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.

Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).

Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

Isaac Babel

– First published as the introduction to Isaac Babel: The Collected Stories, edited by Walter Morison (New York: Criterion Books, Inc., 1955). Also published as "Isaac Babel: Torn Between Violence and Peace" in Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: A good many years ago, in 1929, I chanced to read a book which disturbed me in a way I can still remember. The book was called Red Cavalry; it was a collection of stories about… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Hawthorne in Our Time

– Originally published as “Our Hawthorne” in Hawthorne Centenary Essays, edited by Roy Harvey Pearce (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964). Also published in Partisan Review, Summer 1964.

Excerpt: Henry James’s monograph on Hawthorne must always have a special place in American letters, if only because, as Edmund Wilson observed, it is the first extended study ever to… More

The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English

– “The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English.” Paper read as The Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture at Newnham College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, February 20, 1965. Revised and published in Encounter, July 1965.

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.

Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

The Experience of Literature: A Reader with Commentaries

– Edited by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

This anthology contains a selection of great literary works along with Trilling’s expert and incisive prefaces to each. The prefaces were ultimately gathered and published without… More

Prefaces to The Experience of Literature

– New York: Harcourt, 1967.

Summary: “Introductions to works by authors as varied as Sophocles, Hemingway, Blake, Lawrence, and Lowell, all of which appeared originally in Trilling’s unique anthology, are… More

Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader

– Edited with a Preface and Introduction by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

This anthology contains an introduction published as an essay in The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975.

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

The Oxford Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Poetry and Prose

– Edited by Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

This volume devotes over 100 pages to William Blake, including The Book of Thel and the entire “Night the Ninth” from The Four Zoas, as well as excerpts… More

Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling

– Scott, Jr., Nathan A. Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

“Of This Time, Of That Place” and Other Stories

– Trilling, Diana, compiler. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Five modern stories reveal the imagination and sensitivity of a preeminent literary critic toward the plight of the mentally ill and racial, religious, and economic… More

A Novel of the Thirties

– Originally published as "Young in the Thirties." Commentary 41 (May 1966): 43-51.

Excerpt: “In the 1950’s it was established beyond question that the 1930’s had not simply passed into history but had become history.”

James Joyce in His Letters

– Review of Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2 and 3, edited by Richard Ellman (New York: Viking, 1968). Commentary 45 (February 1968): 54-64.

Excerpt: In 1935, near the end of a long affectionate letter to his son George in America, James Joyce wrote: “Here I conclude. My eyes are tired. For over half a… More

What is Criticism?

– "What is Criticism?" Introduction to Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader, edited and with prefaces by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Aggression and Utopia

– "Aggression and Utopia." Originally published as "Aggression and Utopia: A Note on William Morris's 'News from Nowhere.'" Psychoanalytic Quarterly 42 (April 1973): 214-25.

Whittaker Chambers’ Journey

– "Whittaker Chambers' Journey." Times Saturday Review (London), April 5, 1975, 5, 9.

Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture

– "Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture." An unfinished memoir, intended to be given as a lecture at Purdue University.

The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975

– Ed. Diana Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Pieces written during the last ten years of Trilling’s life include important statements on Joyce, Austen, and Freud, a probing investigation of modern art, a memoir… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

Another Jewish Problem Novel

– "Another Jewish Problem Novel." Review of The Disinherited, by Milton Waldman (New York: Longmans, Green, 1929). Menorah Journal 16 (April 1929): 376-79.

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect

– "D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect." Symposium 1 (July 1930): 361-70.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.

Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions

– "The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions." Partisan Review 6 (Fall 1939): 108-12.

Hemingway and his Critics

– "Hemingway and his Critics." Review of The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, by Earnest Hemingway (New York: Scribner's, 1938). Partisan Review 6 (Winter 1939): 52-60.

Literature and Power

– "Literature and Power." Kenyon Review 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1940): 433-42.

T.S. Eliot’s Politics

– "T.S. Eliot's Politics." First published as "Elements that are Wanted." Review of The Idea of a Christian Society, by T.S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939). Partisan Review 7 (September-October 1940): 367-79.

Excerpt: It is a century ago this year that John Stuart Mill angered his Benthamite friends by his now famous essay on Coleridge in which, writing sympathetically of a religious and… More

Under Forty

– "Under Forty." Originally published as "Under Forty: A Symposium on American Literature and the Younger Generation of American Jews." Contemporary Jewish Record 6 (February 1944). Trilling's contribution pp. 15-17.

The Head and Heart of Henry James

– "The Head and Heart of Henry James." Review of Henry James: The Major Phase, by F.O. Matthiessen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944). New York Times Book Review, November 26, 1944, 3.

The Problem of Influence

– "The Problem of Influence." Review of Freudianism and the Literary Mind, Frederick J. Hoffman (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1945). Nation 161 (September 8, 1945): 234.

Literary Pathology

– "Literary Pathology." Lecture given at the American Psychoanalytic Association, December 7, 1962.

Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism

– Krupnick, Mark. Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1986.

Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation

– O'Hara, Daniel T. Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling

– Trilling, Diana. The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography

– Leitch, Thomas M. Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993.

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode

– “A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode.” Partisan Review 26 (Summer 1959): 445-52.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.

Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.

Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.

Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling

– Heilbrun, Carolyn G. When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.

Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.

Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.

Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe: And Other Stories of Literary Friendship

– Alexander, Edward. Lionel Trilling & Irving Howe: and other stories of literary friendship. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009.

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind

– Kimmage, Michael. “Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind.” New York Times, November 3, 2011.

Excerpt: As Kirsch writes, paraphrasing Trilling’s perspective, “Art is the form in which the writer, and through him the reader, can face down the intolerable contradictions of… More

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.

Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.

Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

Tragedy and Three Novels

– “Tragedy and Three Novels.” Review of A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Scribner’s, 1929); Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1930); The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1929). Symposium 1 (January 1930): 106-14.

Eugene O’Neill

– “Eugene O’Neill.” New Republic 88 (23 September 1936): 376-79.

Matthew Arnold, Poet

– “Matthew Arnold, Poet.” Major British Writers. Edited by G.B. Harrison. 2 volumes. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1954. 2: 419-32.

A version of this essay is in the paperback edition of Trilling’s Matthew Arnold.

Beautiful and Blest

– “Beautiful and Blest.” Review of Great English Short Novels, edited by Cyril Conolly (New York: Dial, 1953); Great French Short Novels, edited by Frederick W. Dupee (New York: Dial, 1952); and Great Russian Short Novels, edited by Philip Rahv (New York: Dial, 1951). Mid-Century 30 (September 1961): 3-9.

Rimbaudelaire

– “Rimbaudelaire.” Review of Arthur Rimbaud, third edition, by Enid Starkie (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1961); and Baudelaire, by Enid Starkie (New York: New Directions, 1958). Mid-Century 34 (December 1961): 3-10.

Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature

– “Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature.” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 64 (7 July 1962): 739-42.

The Wheel

– “The Wheel.” Review of Down There on a Visit, by Christopher Isherwood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962); and  An Official Rose, by Iris Murdoch (New York: Viking, 1962). Mid-Century 41 (July 1962): 5-10.

James Baldwin

– “James Baldwin.” Review of Another Country, by James Baldwin (New York: Dial, 1962). Mid-Century 44 (September 1962): 5-11.

William Wordsworth

– “William Wordsworth.” Atlantic Brief Lives, edited by Louis Kronenberger (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown, 1971). 882-84.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Trilling’s Matthew Arnold

– Barzun, Jacques. "Trilling's Matthew Arnold." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. Columbia University Quarterly, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: “The Critic’s business is to carp; the scholar’s business is to bore.” No one, of course, has the courage to honor those maxims in words, but many of us… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More

Commentary

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.

A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.

Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.

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… More

The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society

– New York: Viking Press, 1950.

Summary: “The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.

Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

Sherwood Anderson

– "Sherwood Anderson." Kenyon Review 3, No. 3 (Summer 1941): 293-302. When published in The Liberal Imagination, Trilling added some matter from The New York Times Book Review, November 9, 1947.

Excerpt: I find it hard, and I think it would be false, to write of Sherwood Anderson without speaking of him personally and even emotionally. I did not know him; I was in his company only… More

Freud and Literature

– "Freud and Literature." Originally published as "The Legacy of Sigmund Freud, Part 2: Literary and Aesthetic." Kenyon Review 2, No. 2 (Spring 1940): 152-73. A revised version appeared in Horizon, September 1947.

Excerpt, from Horizon: The Freudian psychology is the only systematic account of the human mind whch, in point of subtlety and complexity, of interest and tragic power, deserves to stand… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Function of the Little Magazine

– "The Function of the Little Magazine." Introduction to The Partisan Reader: Ten Years of Partisan Review, 1933-1944: An Anthology. Edited by William Phillips and Philip Rahv. New York: The Dial Press, 1946.

Excerpt: The Partisan Reader may be thought of as an ambiguous monument. It commemorates a victory—Partisan Review has survived for a decade, and has survived with a vitality of which the… More

Huckleberry Finn

– "Huckleberry Finn." Introduction Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1876 Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and in the same year began what he called “another boys’ book.” He set little store by the new venture and said that… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.

Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

A Note on Art and Neurosis

– "A Note on Art and Neurosis." The Partisan Review, Winter 1945. Some new material appeared in The New Leader, December 13, 1947.

Excerpt: The question of the mental health of the artist has engaged the attention of our culture since the beginning of the Romantic Movement. Before that time it was commonly said that… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.

Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

F. Scott Fitzgerald

– "F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Nation, April 25, 1945. Also the introduction, with added material, to The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: New Directions, 1945.

Excerpt: It is not what we may fittingly say on all tragic occasions, but the original occasion for these words is strikingly apt to Fitzgerald. Like Milton’s Samson, he had the… More

Art and Fortune

– "Art and Fortune." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1948. First published in Partisan Review, December 1948.

The Meaning of a Literary Idea

– "The Meaning of a Literary Idea." Paper read at the Conference in American Literature at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, February 1949. First published in The American Quarterly, Fall 1949.

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.

Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters

– "The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters." Originally published as the introduction to The Selected Letters of John Keats, New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951.

Excerpt: “We cannot understand Keats’s mind without a very full awareness of what powers of enjoyment he had and of how freely he licensed those powers. The pleasure of the… More

Little Dorrit

– "Litte Dorrit." Kenyon Review 15, No. 4 (Autumn, 1953): 577-59.

Excerpt: Little Dorrit is one of the three great novels of Dickens’ great last period, but of the three it is perhaps the least established with modern readers. When it first… More

Anna Karenina

– "Anna Karenina." Originally published as the introduction to "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, revised Constance Garnett translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951).

William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste

– "William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste." Partisan Review 18 (September-October 1951): 516-36.

Excerpt: Every now and then in the past few years we have heard that we might soon expect a revival of interest in the work of William Dean Howells. And certainly, if this rumor were… More

The Bostonians

– "The Bostonians." Originally published as the introduction to The Bostonians by Henry James (London: John Lehmann, 1953).

Wordsworth and the Rabbis

– First delivered as a lecture at Princeton University at a conference on William Wordsworth, Princeton, NJ, April 21, 1950. First published as "Wordsworth and the Iron Time." Kenyon Review 12, No. 3 (Summer 1950): 477-497.

Excerpt: Our meeting here to do honor to William Wordsworth will have its counterparts in academic centers in all the English-speaking countries. But we can scarcely suppose that in the… More

Flaubert’s Last Testament

– "Flaubert's Last Testament." Partisan Review 20 (November-December 1953): 605-630.

Mansfield Park

– "Mansfield Park." Partisan Review 21 (September-October 1954): 492-511. Also published in Encounter, September 1954: 9-19.

Excerpt: Sooner or later, when we speak of Jane Austen, we speak of her irony, and it is better to speak of it sooner rather than later because nothing can so far mislead us about her work… More

Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination

– Frank, Joseph. "Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination." Sewanee Review, Spring 1956. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: The career and reputation of Lionel Trilling as a literary critic pose something of an anomaly. Not, we should hasten to add, that Mr. Trilling does not deserve all the encomiums… More

A Gathering of Fugitives

– Boston: Beacon Press, 1956.

Summary: “Writings on general cultural issues accompany discussions of such authors as Edith Wharton, Robert Graves, C. P. Snow, and Charles Dickens.” Contents: The Great Aunt… More

The Morality of Inertia

– “The Morality of Inertia.” Essay in Great Moral Dilemmas in Literature, Past and Present, edited by Robert MacIver (New York: Harper and Bros., 1956).

Excerpt: A theological seminary in New York planned a series of lectures on “The Literary Presentations of Great Moral Issues,” and invited me to give one of the talks. Since I have a… More

On the Teaching of Modern Literature

– First published as “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature.” Partisan Review, January-February 1961.

Excerpt: And since my own interests lead me to see literary situations as cultural situations, and cultural situations as great elaborate fights about moral issues, and moral issues as… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.

Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).

Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

Isaac Babel

– First published as the introduction to Isaac Babel: The Collected Stories, edited by Walter Morison (New York: Criterion Books, Inc., 1955). Also published as "Isaac Babel: Torn Between Violence and Peace" in Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: A good many years ago, in 1929, I chanced to read a book which disturbed me in a way I can still remember. The book was called Red Cavalry; it was a collection of stories about… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Hawthorne in Our Time

– Originally published as “Our Hawthorne” in Hawthorne Centenary Essays, edited by Roy Harvey Pearce (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964). Also published in Partisan Review, Summer 1964.

Excerpt: Henry James’s monograph on Hawthorne must always have a special place in American letters, if only because, as Edmund Wilson observed, it is the first extended study ever to… More

The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English

– “The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English.” Paper read as The Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture at Newnham College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, February 20, 1965. Revised and published in Encounter, July 1965.

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.

Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

The Experience of Literature: A Reader with Commentaries

– Edited by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

This anthology contains a selection of great literary works along with Trilling’s expert and incisive prefaces to each. The prefaces were ultimately gathered and published without… More

Prefaces to The Experience of Literature

– New York: Harcourt, 1967.

Summary: “Introductions to works by authors as varied as Sophocles, Hemingway, Blake, Lawrence, and Lowell, all of which appeared originally in Trilling’s unique anthology, are… More

Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader

– Edited with a Preface and Introduction by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

This anthology contains an introduction published as an essay in The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975.

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

The Oxford Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Poetry and Prose

– Edited by Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

This volume devotes over 100 pages to William Blake, including The Book of Thel and the entire “Night the Ninth” from The Four Zoas, as well as excerpts… More

Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling

– Scott, Jr., Nathan A. Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

“Of This Time, Of That Place” and Other Stories

– Trilling, Diana, compiler. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Five modern stories reveal the imagination and sensitivity of a preeminent literary critic toward the plight of the mentally ill and racial, religious, and economic… More

A Novel of the Thirties

– Originally published as "Young in the Thirties." Commentary 41 (May 1966): 43-51.

Excerpt: “In the 1950’s it was established beyond question that the 1930’s had not simply passed into history but had become history.”

James Joyce in His Letters

– Review of Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2 and 3, edited by Richard Ellman (New York: Viking, 1968). Commentary 45 (February 1968): 54-64.

Excerpt: In 1935, near the end of a long affectionate letter to his son George in America, James Joyce wrote: “Here I conclude. My eyes are tired. For over half a… More

What is Criticism?

– "What is Criticism?" Introduction to Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader, edited and with prefaces by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Aggression and Utopia

– "Aggression and Utopia." Originally published as "Aggression and Utopia: A Note on William Morris's 'News from Nowhere.'" Psychoanalytic Quarterly 42 (April 1973): 214-25.

Whittaker Chambers’ Journey

– "Whittaker Chambers' Journey." Times Saturday Review (London), April 5, 1975, 5, 9.

Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture

– "Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture." An unfinished memoir, intended to be given as a lecture at Purdue University.

The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975

– Ed. Diana Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Pieces written during the last ten years of Trilling’s life include important statements on Joyce, Austen, and Freud, a probing investigation of modern art, a memoir… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

Another Jewish Problem Novel

– "Another Jewish Problem Novel." Review of The Disinherited, by Milton Waldman (New York: Longmans, Green, 1929). Menorah Journal 16 (April 1929): 376-79.

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect

– "D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect." Symposium 1 (July 1930): 361-70.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.

Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions

– "The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions." Partisan Review 6 (Fall 1939): 108-12.

Hemingway and his Critics

– "Hemingway and his Critics." Review of The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, by Earnest Hemingway (New York: Scribner's, 1938). Partisan Review 6 (Winter 1939): 52-60.

Literature and Power

– "Literature and Power." Kenyon Review 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1940): 433-42.

T.S. Eliot’s Politics

– "T.S. Eliot's Politics." First published as "Elements that are Wanted." Review of The Idea of a Christian Society, by T.S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939). Partisan Review 7 (September-October 1940): 367-79.

Excerpt: It is a century ago this year that John Stuart Mill angered his Benthamite friends by his now famous essay on Coleridge in which, writing sympathetically of a religious and… More

Under Forty

– "Under Forty." Originally published as "Under Forty: A Symposium on American Literature and the Younger Generation of American Jews." Contemporary Jewish Record 6 (February 1944). Trilling's contribution pp. 15-17.

The Head and Heart of Henry James

– "The Head and Heart of Henry James." Review of Henry James: The Major Phase, by F.O. Matthiessen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944). New York Times Book Review, November 26, 1944, 3.

The Problem of Influence

– "The Problem of Influence." Review of Freudianism and the Literary Mind, Frederick J. Hoffman (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1945). Nation 161 (September 8, 1945): 234.

Literary Pathology

– "Literary Pathology." Lecture given at the American Psychoanalytic Association, December 7, 1962.

Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism

– Krupnick, Mark. Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1986.

Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation

– O'Hara, Daniel T. Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling

– Trilling, Diana. The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography

– Leitch, Thomas M. Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993.

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode

– “A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode.” Partisan Review 26 (Summer 1959): 445-52.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.

Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.

Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.

Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling

– Heilbrun, Carolyn G. When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.

Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.

Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.

Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe: And Other Stories of Literary Friendship

– Alexander, Edward. Lionel Trilling & Irving Howe: and other stories of literary friendship. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009.

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind

– Kimmage, Michael. “Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind.” New York Times, November 3, 2011.

Excerpt: As Kirsch writes, paraphrasing Trilling’s perspective, “Art is the form in which the writer, and through him the reader, can face down the intolerable contradictions of… More

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.

Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.

Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

Tragedy and Three Novels

– “Tragedy and Three Novels.” Review of A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Scribner’s, 1929); Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1930); The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1929). Symposium 1 (January 1930): 106-14.

Eugene O’Neill

– “Eugene O’Neill.” New Republic 88 (23 September 1936): 376-79.

Matthew Arnold, Poet

– “Matthew Arnold, Poet.” Major British Writers. Edited by G.B. Harrison. 2 volumes. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1954. 2: 419-32.

A version of this essay is in the paperback edition of Trilling’s Matthew Arnold.

Beautiful and Blest

– “Beautiful and Blest.” Review of Great English Short Novels, edited by Cyril Conolly (New York: Dial, 1953); Great French Short Novels, edited by Frederick W. Dupee (New York: Dial, 1952); and Great Russian Short Novels, edited by Philip Rahv (New York: Dial, 1951). Mid-Century 30 (September 1961): 3-9.

Rimbaudelaire

– “Rimbaudelaire.” Review of Arthur Rimbaud, third edition, by Enid Starkie (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1961); and Baudelaire, by Enid Starkie (New York: New Directions, 1958). Mid-Century 34 (December 1961): 3-10.

Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature

– “Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature.” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 64 (7 July 1962): 739-42.

The Wheel

– “The Wheel.” Review of Down There on a Visit, by Christopher Isherwood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962); and  An Official Rose, by Iris Murdoch (New York: Viking, 1962). Mid-Century 41 (July 1962): 5-10.

James Baldwin

– “James Baldwin.” Review of Another Country, by James Baldwin (New York: Dial, 1962). Mid-Century 44 (September 1962): 5-11.

William Wordsworth

– “William Wordsworth.” Atlantic Brief Lives, edited by Louis Kronenberger (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown, 1971). 882-84.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Trilling’s Matthew Arnold

– Barzun, Jacques. "Trilling's Matthew Arnold." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. Columbia University Quarterly, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: “The Critic’s business is to carp; the scholar’s business is to bore.” No one, of course, has the courage to honor those maxims in words, but many of us… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More

Multimedia

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.

A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.

Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.

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… More

The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society

– New York: Viking Press, 1950.

Summary: “The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.

Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

Sherwood Anderson

– "Sherwood Anderson." Kenyon Review 3, No. 3 (Summer 1941): 293-302. When published in The Liberal Imagination, Trilling added some matter from The New York Times Book Review, November 9, 1947.

Excerpt: I find it hard, and I think it would be false, to write of Sherwood Anderson without speaking of him personally and even emotionally. I did not know him; I was in his company only… More

Freud and Literature

– "Freud and Literature." Originally published as "The Legacy of Sigmund Freud, Part 2: Literary and Aesthetic." Kenyon Review 2, No. 2 (Spring 1940): 152-73. A revised version appeared in Horizon, September 1947.

Excerpt, from Horizon: The Freudian psychology is the only systematic account of the human mind whch, in point of subtlety and complexity, of interest and tragic power, deserves to stand… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Function of the Little Magazine

– "The Function of the Little Magazine." Introduction to The Partisan Reader: Ten Years of Partisan Review, 1933-1944: An Anthology. Edited by William Phillips and Philip Rahv. New York: The Dial Press, 1946.

Excerpt: The Partisan Reader may be thought of as an ambiguous monument. It commemorates a victory—Partisan Review has survived for a decade, and has survived with a vitality of which the… More

Huckleberry Finn

– "Huckleberry Finn." Introduction Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1876 Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and in the same year began what he called “another boys’ book.” He set little store by the new venture and said that… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.

Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

A Note on Art and Neurosis

– "A Note on Art and Neurosis." The Partisan Review, Winter 1945. Some new material appeared in The New Leader, December 13, 1947.

Excerpt: The question of the mental health of the artist has engaged the attention of our culture since the beginning of the Romantic Movement. Before that time it was commonly said that… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.

Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

F. Scott Fitzgerald

– "F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Nation, April 25, 1945. Also the introduction, with added material, to The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: New Directions, 1945.

Excerpt: It is not what we may fittingly say on all tragic occasions, but the original occasion for these words is strikingly apt to Fitzgerald. Like Milton’s Samson, he had the… More

Art and Fortune

– "Art and Fortune." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1948. First published in Partisan Review, December 1948.

The Meaning of a Literary Idea

– "The Meaning of a Literary Idea." Paper read at the Conference in American Literature at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, February 1949. First published in The American Quarterly, Fall 1949.

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.

Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters

– "The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters." Originally published as the introduction to The Selected Letters of John Keats, New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951.

Excerpt: “We cannot understand Keats’s mind without a very full awareness of what powers of enjoyment he had and of how freely he licensed those powers. The pleasure of the… More

Little Dorrit

– "Litte Dorrit." Kenyon Review 15, No. 4 (Autumn, 1953): 577-59.

Excerpt: Little Dorrit is one of the three great novels of Dickens’ great last period, but of the three it is perhaps the least established with modern readers. When it first… More

Anna Karenina

– "Anna Karenina." Originally published as the introduction to "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, revised Constance Garnett translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951).

William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste

– "William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste." Partisan Review 18 (September-October 1951): 516-36.

Excerpt: Every now and then in the past few years we have heard that we might soon expect a revival of interest in the work of William Dean Howells. And certainly, if this rumor were… More

The Bostonians

– "The Bostonians." Originally published as the introduction to The Bostonians by Henry James (London: John Lehmann, 1953).

Wordsworth and the Rabbis

– First delivered as a lecture at Princeton University at a conference on William Wordsworth, Princeton, NJ, April 21, 1950. First published as "Wordsworth and the Iron Time." Kenyon Review 12, No. 3 (Summer 1950): 477-497.

Excerpt: Our meeting here to do honor to William Wordsworth will have its counterparts in academic centers in all the English-speaking countries. But we can scarcely suppose that in the… More

Flaubert’s Last Testament

– "Flaubert's Last Testament." Partisan Review 20 (November-December 1953): 605-630.

Mansfield Park

– "Mansfield Park." Partisan Review 21 (September-October 1954): 492-511. Also published in Encounter, September 1954: 9-19.

Excerpt: Sooner or later, when we speak of Jane Austen, we speak of her irony, and it is better to speak of it sooner rather than later because nothing can so far mislead us about her work… More

Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination

– Frank, Joseph. "Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination." Sewanee Review, Spring 1956. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: The career and reputation of Lionel Trilling as a literary critic pose something of an anomaly. Not, we should hasten to add, that Mr. Trilling does not deserve all the encomiums… More

A Gathering of Fugitives

– Boston: Beacon Press, 1956.

Summary: “Writings on general cultural issues accompany discussions of such authors as Edith Wharton, Robert Graves, C. P. Snow, and Charles Dickens.” Contents: The Great Aunt… More

The Morality of Inertia

– “The Morality of Inertia.” Essay in Great Moral Dilemmas in Literature, Past and Present, edited by Robert MacIver (New York: Harper and Bros., 1956).

Excerpt: A theological seminary in New York planned a series of lectures on “The Literary Presentations of Great Moral Issues,” and invited me to give one of the talks. Since I have a… More

On the Teaching of Modern Literature

– First published as “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature.” Partisan Review, January-February 1961.

Excerpt: And since my own interests lead me to see literary situations as cultural situations, and cultural situations as great elaborate fights about moral issues, and moral issues as… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.

Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).

Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

Isaac Babel

– First published as the introduction to Isaac Babel: The Collected Stories, edited by Walter Morison (New York: Criterion Books, Inc., 1955). Also published as "Isaac Babel: Torn Between Violence and Peace" in Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: A good many years ago, in 1929, I chanced to read a book which disturbed me in a way I can still remember. The book was called Red Cavalry; it was a collection of stories about… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Hawthorne in Our Time

– Originally published as “Our Hawthorne” in Hawthorne Centenary Essays, edited by Roy Harvey Pearce (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964). Also published in Partisan Review, Summer 1964.

Excerpt: Henry James’s monograph on Hawthorne must always have a special place in American letters, if only because, as Edmund Wilson observed, it is the first extended study ever to… More

The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English

– “The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English.” Paper read as The Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture at Newnham College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, February 20, 1965. Revised and published in Encounter, July 1965.

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.

Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

The Experience of Literature: A Reader with Commentaries

– Edited by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

This anthology contains a selection of great literary works along with Trilling’s expert and incisive prefaces to each. The prefaces were ultimately gathered and published without… More

Prefaces to The Experience of Literature

– New York: Harcourt, 1967.

Summary: “Introductions to works by authors as varied as Sophocles, Hemingway, Blake, Lawrence, and Lowell, all of which appeared originally in Trilling’s unique anthology, are… More

Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader

– Edited with a Preface and Introduction by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

This anthology contains an introduction published as an essay in The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975.

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

The Oxford Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Poetry and Prose

– Edited by Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

This volume devotes over 100 pages to William Blake, including The Book of Thel and the entire “Night the Ninth” from The Four Zoas, as well as excerpts… More

Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling

– Scott, Jr., Nathan A. Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

“Of This Time, Of That Place” and Other Stories

– Trilling, Diana, compiler. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Five modern stories reveal the imagination and sensitivity of a preeminent literary critic toward the plight of the mentally ill and racial, religious, and economic… More

A Novel of the Thirties

– Originally published as "Young in the Thirties." Commentary 41 (May 1966): 43-51.

Excerpt: “In the 1950’s it was established beyond question that the 1930’s had not simply passed into history but had become history.”

James Joyce in His Letters

– Review of Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2 and 3, edited by Richard Ellman (New York: Viking, 1968). Commentary 45 (February 1968): 54-64.

Excerpt: In 1935, near the end of a long affectionate letter to his son George in America, James Joyce wrote: “Here I conclude. My eyes are tired. For over half a… More

What is Criticism?

– "What is Criticism?" Introduction to Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader, edited and with prefaces by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Aggression and Utopia

– "Aggression and Utopia." Originally published as "Aggression and Utopia: A Note on William Morris's 'News from Nowhere.'" Psychoanalytic Quarterly 42 (April 1973): 214-25.

Whittaker Chambers’ Journey

– "Whittaker Chambers' Journey." Times Saturday Review (London), April 5, 1975, 5, 9.

Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture

– "Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture." An unfinished memoir, intended to be given as a lecture at Purdue University.

The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975

– Ed. Diana Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Pieces written during the last ten years of Trilling’s life include important statements on Joyce, Austen, and Freud, a probing investigation of modern art, a memoir… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

Another Jewish Problem Novel

– "Another Jewish Problem Novel." Review of The Disinherited, by Milton Waldman (New York: Longmans, Green, 1929). Menorah Journal 16 (April 1929): 376-79.

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect

– "D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect." Symposium 1 (July 1930): 361-70.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.

Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions

– "The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions." Partisan Review 6 (Fall 1939): 108-12.

Hemingway and his Critics

– "Hemingway and his Critics." Review of The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, by Earnest Hemingway (New York: Scribner's, 1938). Partisan Review 6 (Winter 1939): 52-60.

Literature and Power

– "Literature and Power." Kenyon Review 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1940): 433-42.

T.S. Eliot’s Politics

– "T.S. Eliot's Politics." First published as "Elements that are Wanted." Review of The Idea of a Christian Society, by T.S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939). Partisan Review 7 (September-October 1940): 367-79.

Excerpt: It is a century ago this year that John Stuart Mill angered his Benthamite friends by his now famous essay on Coleridge in which, writing sympathetically of a religious and… More

Under Forty

– "Under Forty." Originally published as "Under Forty: A Symposium on American Literature and the Younger Generation of American Jews." Contemporary Jewish Record 6 (February 1944). Trilling's contribution pp. 15-17.

The Head and Heart of Henry James

– "The Head and Heart of Henry James." Review of Henry James: The Major Phase, by F.O. Matthiessen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944). New York Times Book Review, November 26, 1944, 3.

The Problem of Influence

– "The Problem of Influence." Review of Freudianism and the Literary Mind, Frederick J. Hoffman (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1945). Nation 161 (September 8, 1945): 234.

Literary Pathology

– "Literary Pathology." Lecture given at the American Psychoanalytic Association, December 7, 1962.

Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism

– Krupnick, Mark. Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1986.

Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation

– O'Hara, Daniel T. Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling

– Trilling, Diana. The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography

– Leitch, Thomas M. Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993.

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode

– “A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode.” Partisan Review 26 (Summer 1959): 445-52.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.

Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.

Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.

Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling

– Heilbrun, Carolyn G. When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.

Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.

Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.

Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe: And Other Stories of Literary Friendship

– Alexander, Edward. Lionel Trilling & Irving Howe: and other stories of literary friendship. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009.

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind

– Kimmage, Michael. “Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind.” New York Times, November 3, 2011.

Excerpt: As Kirsch writes, paraphrasing Trilling’s perspective, “Art is the form in which the writer, and through him the reader, can face down the intolerable contradictions of… More

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.

Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.

Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

Tragedy and Three Novels

– “Tragedy and Three Novels.” Review of A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Scribner’s, 1929); Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1930); The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1929). Symposium 1 (January 1930): 106-14.

Eugene O’Neill

– “Eugene O’Neill.” New Republic 88 (23 September 1936): 376-79.

Matthew Arnold, Poet

– “Matthew Arnold, Poet.” Major British Writers. Edited by G.B. Harrison. 2 volumes. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1954. 2: 419-32.

A version of this essay is in the paperback edition of Trilling’s Matthew Arnold.

Beautiful and Blest

– “Beautiful and Blest.” Review of Great English Short Novels, edited by Cyril Conolly (New York: Dial, 1953); Great French Short Novels, edited by Frederick W. Dupee (New York: Dial, 1952); and Great Russian Short Novels, edited by Philip Rahv (New York: Dial, 1951). Mid-Century 30 (September 1961): 3-9.

Rimbaudelaire

– “Rimbaudelaire.” Review of Arthur Rimbaud, third edition, by Enid Starkie (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1961); and Baudelaire, by Enid Starkie (New York: New Directions, 1958). Mid-Century 34 (December 1961): 3-10.

Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature

– “Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature.” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 64 (7 July 1962): 739-42.

The Wheel

– “The Wheel.” Review of Down There on a Visit, by Christopher Isherwood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962); and  An Official Rose, by Iris Murdoch (New York: Viking, 1962). Mid-Century 41 (July 1962): 5-10.

James Baldwin

– “James Baldwin.” Review of Another Country, by James Baldwin (New York: Dial, 1962). Mid-Century 44 (September 1962): 5-11.

William Wordsworth

– “William Wordsworth.” Atlantic Brief Lives, edited by Louis Kronenberger (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown, 1971). 882-84.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Trilling’s Matthew Arnold

– Barzun, Jacques. "Trilling's Matthew Arnold." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. Columbia University Quarterly, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: “The Critic’s business is to carp; the scholar’s business is to bore.” No one, of course, has the courage to honor those maxims in words, but many of us… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More

Teaching

Matthew Arnold

– New York: Norton, 1939.

A study of the work and thought of Matthew Arnold

E.M. Forster

– New York: New Directions, 1943.

Summary: “A concise critical study of Forster’s personality, short stories, and novels”

The Moral Critic

– Kristol, Irving. "The Moral Critic." Review of E.M. Forster, by Lionel Trilling. Enquiry, April 1944. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: [I]n that very same article Mr. Trilling incorporated two distinct chidings. He was angry with the Left for having surrendered its traditional moral vision, and at the same time… More

The Middle of the Journey

– New York: Viking, 1947.

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… More

The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society

– New York: Viking Press, 1950.

Summary: “The Liberal Imagination is one of the most admired and influential works of criticism of the last century, a work that is not only a masterpiece of literary criticism but… More

Reality in America

– "Reality in America." Part 1 published in Partisan Review, January-February 1940. Part 2 published in The Nation, April 20, 1946.

Parrington was not a great mind; he was not a precise thinker or, except when measured by the low eminences that were about him, an impressive one. Separate Parrington from his informing… More

Sherwood Anderson

– "Sherwood Anderson." Kenyon Review 3, No. 3 (Summer 1941): 293-302. When published in The Liberal Imagination, Trilling added some matter from The New York Times Book Review, November 9, 1947.

Excerpt: I find it hard, and I think it would be false, to write of Sherwood Anderson without speaking of him personally and even emotionally. I did not know him; I was in his company only… More

Freud and Literature

– "Freud and Literature." Originally published as "The Legacy of Sigmund Freud, Part 2: Literary and Aesthetic." Kenyon Review 2, No. 2 (Spring 1940): 152-73. A revised version appeared in Horizon, September 1947.

Excerpt, from Horizon: The Freudian psychology is the only systematic account of the human mind whch, in point of subtlety and complexity, of interest and tragic power, deserves to stand… More

The Princess Casamassima

– "The Princess Casamassima," Introduction to The Princess Casamassima by Henry James. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1888, on the second of January, which in any year is likely to be a sad day, Henry James wrote to his friend William Dean Howells that his reputation had been dreadfully injured… More

The Function of the Little Magazine

– "The Function of the Little Magazine." Introduction to The Partisan Reader: Ten Years of Partisan Review, 1933-1944: An Anthology. Edited by William Phillips and Philip Rahv. New York: The Dial Press, 1946.

Excerpt: The Partisan Reader may be thought of as an ambiguous monument. It commemorates a victory—Partisan Review has survived for a decade, and has survived with a vitality of which the… More

Huckleberry Finn

– "Huckleberry Finn." Introduction Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. New York: Rinehart and Company, 1948.

Excerpt: In 1876 Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and in the same year began what he called “another boys’ book.” He set little store by the new venture and said that… More

The Immortality Ode

– "The Immortality Ode." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1941. First published in The English Institute Annual, 1941. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942.

Excerpt: Criticism, we know, must always be concerned with the poem itself. But a poem does not always exist only in itself; sometimes it has a very lively existence in its false or partial… More

A Note on Art and Neurosis

– "A Note on Art and Neurosis." The Partisan Review, Winter 1945. Some new material appeared in The New Leader, December 13, 1947.

Excerpt: The question of the mental health of the artist has engaged the attention of our culture since the beginning of the Romantic Movement. Before that time it was commonly said that… More

Manners, Morals, and the Novel

– "Manners, Morals, and the Novel." Paper read at the Conference on the Heritage of the English-Speaking Peoples and Their Responsibilities, at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, September 1947. First published in The Kenyon Review 10, No. 1 (Winter 1948): 11-27.

Excerpt: The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to the… More

F. Scott Fitzgerald

– "F. Scott Fitzgerald." The Nation, April 25, 1945. Also the introduction, with added material, to The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: New Directions, 1945.

Excerpt: It is not what we may fittingly say on all tragic occasions, but the original occasion for these words is strikingly apt to Fitzgerald. Like Milton’s Samson, he had the… More

Art and Fortune

– "Art and Fortune." Paper read before the English Institute, September 1948. First published in Partisan Review, December 1948.

The Meaning of a Literary Idea

– "The Meaning of a Literary Idea." Paper read at the Conference in American Literature at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, February 1949. First published in The American Quarterly, Fall 1949.

The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism

– New York: Viking, 1955.

Summary: “Analytical studies trace the development theme of the individual in selected novels, letters, and poems from the end of the eighteenth century to the present.”  … More

The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters

– "The Poet as Hero: Keats in his Letters." Originally published as the introduction to The Selected Letters of John Keats, New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951.

Excerpt: “We cannot understand Keats’s mind without a very full awareness of what powers of enjoyment he had and of how freely he licensed those powers. The pleasure of the… More

Little Dorrit

– "Litte Dorrit." Kenyon Review 15, No. 4 (Autumn, 1953): 577-59.

Excerpt: Little Dorrit is one of the three great novels of Dickens’ great last period, but of the three it is perhaps the least established with modern readers. When it first… More

Anna Karenina

– "Anna Karenina." Originally published as the introduction to "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, revised Constance Garnett translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951).

William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste

– "William Dean Howells and the Roots of Modern Taste." Partisan Review 18 (September-October 1951): 516-36.

Excerpt: Every now and then in the past few years we have heard that we might soon expect a revival of interest in the work of William Dean Howells. And certainly, if this rumor were… More

The Bostonians

– "The Bostonians." Originally published as the introduction to The Bostonians by Henry James (London: John Lehmann, 1953).

Wordsworth and the Rabbis

– First delivered as a lecture at Princeton University at a conference on William Wordsworth, Princeton, NJ, April 21, 1950. First published as "Wordsworth and the Iron Time." Kenyon Review 12, No. 3 (Summer 1950): 477-497.

Excerpt: Our meeting here to do honor to William Wordsworth will have its counterparts in academic centers in all the English-speaking countries. But we can scarcely suppose that in the… More

Flaubert’s Last Testament

– "Flaubert's Last Testament." Partisan Review 20 (November-December 1953): 605-630.

Mansfield Park

– "Mansfield Park." Partisan Review 21 (September-October 1954): 492-511. Also published in Encounter, September 1954: 9-19.

Excerpt: Sooner or later, when we speak of Jane Austen, we speak of her irony, and it is better to speak of it sooner rather than later because nothing can so far mislead us about her work… More

Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination

– Frank, Joseph. "Lionel Trilling and the Conservative Imagination." Sewanee Review, Spring 1956. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves, edited by John Rodden (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Excerpts: The career and reputation of Lionel Trilling as a literary critic pose something of an anomaly. Not, we should hasten to add, that Mr. Trilling does not deserve all the encomiums… More

A Gathering of Fugitives

– Boston: Beacon Press, 1956.

Summary: “Writings on general cultural issues accompany discussions of such authors as Edith Wharton, Robert Graves, C. P. Snow, and Charles Dickens.” Contents: The Great Aunt… More

The Morality of Inertia

– “The Morality of Inertia.” Essay in Great Moral Dilemmas in Literature, Past and Present, edited by Robert MacIver (New York: Harper and Bros., 1956).

Excerpt: A theological seminary in New York planned a series of lectures on “The Literary Presentations of Great Moral Issues,” and invited me to give one of the talks. Since I have a… More

On the Teaching of Modern Literature

– First published as “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature.” Partisan Review, January-February 1961.

Excerpt: And since my own interests lead me to see literary situations as cultural situations, and cultural situations as great elaborate fights about moral issues, and moral issues as… More

Emma and the Legend of Jane Austen

– First published as the introduction to Emma by Jane Austen, Riverside Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1957). Also published in Encounter 8, no. 6 (June 1957).

The Fate of Pleasure

– “The Fate of Pleasure.” Partisan Review, Summer 1963.

Excerpt: Of all critical essays in the English language, there is none that has established itself so firmly in our minds as Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Indeed, certain of… More

Freud: Within and Beyond Culture

– “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” First delivered as “Freud and the Crisis of our Culture” for the Freud Anniversary Lecture in the New York Psychoanalytical Society and the New York Psychoanalytical Institute, May 1955. Subsequently published as Freud and the Crisis of our Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).

Excerpt: And in the degree that society was personalized by the concept of culture, the individual was seen to be far more deeply implicated in society than ever before. This is not an idea… More

Isaac Babel

– First published as the introduction to Isaac Babel: The Collected Stories, edited by Walter Morison (New York: Criterion Books, Inc., 1955). Also published as "Isaac Babel: Torn Between Violence and Peace" in Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: A good many years ago, in 1929, I chanced to read a book which disturbed me in a way I can still remember. The book was called Red Cavalry; it was a collection of stories about… More

The Leavis-Snow Controversy

– First published as “A Comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy.” Commentary, June 1955.

Excerpt: It is now nearly eighty years since Matthew Arnold came to America on his famous lecture tour. Of his repertory of three lectures, none was calculated to give unqualified pleasure… More

Hawthorne in Our Time

– Originally published as “Our Hawthorne” in Hawthorne Centenary Essays, edited by Roy Harvey Pearce (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1964). Also published in Partisan Review, Summer 1964.

Excerpt: Henry James’s monograph on Hawthorne must always have a special place in American letters, if only because, as Edmund Wilson observed, it is the first extended study ever to… More

The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English

– “The Two Environments: Reflections on the Study of English.” Paper read as The Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture at Newnham College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, February 20, 1965. Revised and published in Encounter, July 1965.

Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning

– New York: Viking, 1965.

Summary: “In essays on education, literature, and psychoanalysis, Trilling addresses himself to the assumptions made by those who define themselves in terms of their relation to the… More

The Experience of Literature: A Reader with Commentaries

– Edited by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

This anthology contains a selection of great literary works along with Trilling’s expert and incisive prefaces to each. The prefaces were ultimately gathered and published without… More

Prefaces to The Experience of Literature

– New York: Harcourt, 1967.

Summary: “Introductions to works by authors as varied as Sophocles, Hemingway, Blake, Lawrence, and Lowell, all of which appeared originally in Trilling’s unique anthology, are… More

Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader

– Edited with a Preface and Introduction by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

This anthology contains an introduction published as an essay in The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975.

Sincerity and Authenticity

– The Carles Eliot Norton Lectures, 1969-1970. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Summary: “Now and then,” writes Lionel Triling “it is possible to observe the moral life in process of revising itself.” In this new book he is concerned with such a… More

The Oxford Anthology of English Literature: Romantic Poetry and Prose

– Edited by Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.

This volume devotes over 100 pages to William Blake, including The Book of Thel and the entire “Night the Ninth” from The Four Zoas, as well as excerpts… More

Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling

– Scott, Jr., Nathan A. Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973.

Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling

– Anderson, Quentin, Stephen Donadio, and Steven Marcus, eds. Art, Politics, and Will: Essays in Honor of Lionel Trilling. New York: Basic Books, 1977.

Art, Politics, and Will was originally conceived as a Festschrift for Trilling. However, he passed away before the book could be published, and it was converted into a memorial volume. The… More

“Of This Time, Of That Place” and Other Stories

– Trilling, Diana, compiler. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Five modern stories reveal the imagination and sensitivity of a preeminent literary critic toward the plight of the mentally ill and racial, religious, and economic… More

A Novel of the Thirties

– Originally published as "Young in the Thirties." Commentary 41 (May 1966): 43-51.

Excerpt: “In the 1950’s it was established beyond question that the 1930’s had not simply passed into history but had become history.”

James Joyce in His Letters

– Review of Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2 and 3, edited by Richard Ellman (New York: Viking, 1968). Commentary 45 (February 1968): 54-64.

Excerpt: In 1935, near the end of a long affectionate letter to his son George in America, James Joyce wrote: “Here I conclude. My eyes are tired. For over half a… More

What is Criticism?

– "What is Criticism?" Introduction to Literary Criticism: An Introductory Reader, edited and with prefaces by Lionel Trilling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.

Aggression and Utopia

– "Aggression and Utopia." Originally published as "Aggression and Utopia: A Note on William Morris's 'News from Nowhere.'" Psychoanalytic Quarterly 42 (April 1973): 214-25.

Whittaker Chambers’ Journey

– "Whittaker Chambers' Journey." Times Saturday Review (London), April 5, 1975, 5, 9.

Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture

– "Some Notes for an Autobiographical Lecture." An unfinished memoir, intended to be given as a lecture at Purdue University.

The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-1975

– Ed. Diana Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.

Summary: “Pieces written during the last ten years of Trilling’s life include important statements on Joyce, Austen, and Freud, a probing investigation of modern art, a memoir… More

Speaking of Literature and Society

– Trilling, Diana, ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

Summary: “Diana Trilling selected pieces from her husband’s previously uncollected writings covering the wide range of Trilling’s concerns from his undergraduate days… More

Another Jewish Problem Novel

– "Another Jewish Problem Novel." Review of The Disinherited, by Milton Waldman (New York: Longmans, Green, 1929). Menorah Journal 16 (April 1929): 376-79.

The Promise of Realism

– "The Promise of Realism." Review of Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg, with an introduction by D.H. Lawrence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930); Pay Day, by Nathan Asch (New York: Brewer and Warren, 1930); and Frankie and Johnnie, by Meyer Levin (New York: John Day, 1930). Menorah Journal 18 (May 1930): 480-84.

D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect

– "D.H. Lawrence: A Neglected Aspect." Symposium 1 (July 1930): 361-70.

The America of John Dos Passos

– "The America of John Dos Passos." Review of U.S.A., by John Dos Passos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1937). Partisan Review 4 (April 1938): 26-32.

Excerpt: U.S.A. is far more impressive than even its three impressive parts—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, The Big Money—might have led one to expect. It stands as the important American… More

The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions

– "The Situation in American Writing: Seven Questions." Partisan Review 6 (Fall 1939): 108-12.

Hemingway and his Critics

– "Hemingway and his Critics." Review of The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories, by Earnest Hemingway (New York: Scribner's, 1938). Partisan Review 6 (Winter 1939): 52-60.

Literature and Power

– "Literature and Power." Kenyon Review 2, no. 4 (Autumn 1940): 433-42.

T.S. Eliot’s Politics

– "T.S. Eliot's Politics." First published as "Elements that are Wanted." Review of The Idea of a Christian Society, by T.S. Eliot (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939). Partisan Review 7 (September-October 1940): 367-79.

Excerpt: It is a century ago this year that John Stuart Mill angered his Benthamite friends by his now famous essay on Coleridge in which, writing sympathetically of a religious and… More

Under Forty

– "Under Forty." Originally published as "Under Forty: A Symposium on American Literature and the Younger Generation of American Jews." Contemporary Jewish Record 6 (February 1944). Trilling's contribution pp. 15-17.

The Head and Heart of Henry James

– "The Head and Heart of Henry James." Review of Henry James: The Major Phase, by F.O. Matthiessen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944). New York Times Book Review, November 26, 1944, 3.

The Problem of Influence

– "The Problem of Influence." Review of Freudianism and the Literary Mind, Frederick J. Hoffman (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1945). Nation 161 (September 8, 1945): 234.

Literary Pathology

– "Literary Pathology." Lecture given at the American Psychoanalytic Association, December 7, 1962.

Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism

– Krupnick, Mark. Lionel Trilling and the Fate of Cultural Criticism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1986.

Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation

– O'Hara, Daniel T. Lionel Trilling: The Work of Liberation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling

– Trilling, Diana. The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993.

Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography

– Leitch, Thomas M. Lionel Trilling: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1993.

Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves

– Rodden, John, ed. Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

Collection of essays by prominent critics on Trilling’s career; includes many of the most important essays on Trilling’s work published during his lifetime.

A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode

– “A Speech on Robert Frost: A Cultural Episode.” Partisan Review 26 (Summer 1959): 445-52.

The Last Great Critic

– Glick, Nathan. “The Last Great Critic.” The Atlantic, July 2000.

Excerpt: I CANNOT close this review without noting two contributions by the editor. John Rodden’s introductory survey of the contents of this collection is richly but casually… More

Night Vision

– Delbanco, Andrew. “Night Vision.” Review of The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent: Selected Essays, by Lionel Trilling, edited with an introduction by Leon Wieseltier (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). New York Review of Books, January 11, 2001.

Excerpt: Trilling’s real distinctiveness, I think, is that he was at heart a teacher. He carried into his writing the classroom principle that stating any proposition without at least a… More

Introduction to The Middle of the Journey

– Engel, Monroe. Introduction to The Middle of the Journey, by Lionel Trilling, v-xi. New York: New York Review of Books, 2002.

Excerpt: In its own forceful way, very unlike either Faulkner or Hemingway, The Middle of the Journey too is “at work upon the recalcitrant stuff of life.” This is… More

When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling

– Heilbrun, Carolyn G. When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers Barzun, Fadiman, and Trilling. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Original edition: New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.

Summary: Bringing together the thoughts of one of American literature’s sharpest cultural critics, this compendium will open the eyes of a whole new audience to the work of Lionel… More

Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays

– Wieseltier, Leon. Introduction to The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays, ix-xvi. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.

Excerpt: Trilling emphatically believed that “the problems of Life” must indeed be brought before the mind, thought not for the purpose of eliciting anything so simple and so… More

Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and His Discontents

– Menand, Louis. "Regrets Only: Lionel Trilling and his discontents." New Yorker, September 29, 2008.

Excerpt: Most people who picked up the book in 1950 would have understood it as an attack on the dogmatism and philistinism of the fellow-travelling left, but the term “liberal” is… More

Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe: And Other Stories of Literary Friendship

– Alexander, Edward. Lionel Trilling & Irving Howe: and other stories of literary friendship. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009.

Why Trilling Matters

– Kirsch, Adam. Why Trilling Matters. New Haven : Yale University Press, 2011.

Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind

– Kimmage, Michael. “Lionel Trilling’s Life of the Mind.” New York Times, November 3, 2011.

Excerpt: As Kirsch writes, paraphrasing Trilling’s perspective, “Art is the form in which the writer, and through him the reader, can face down the intolerable contradictions of… More

Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination

– Beran, Michael Knox. “Lionel Trilling and the Social Imagination.” City Journal, Winter 2011.

Excerpt: Trilling’s hostility to the social imagination is nowhere more evident than in the fourth essay in The Liberal Imagination, a meditation on Henry James’s 1886 novel The… More

Does Lionel Trilling Matter?

– Massie, Allan. “Does Lionel Trilling Matter?” Review of Why Trilling Matters, by Adam Kirsch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). Times Literary Supplement, February 1, 2012.

Excerpt: In setting out to demonstrate that Trilling still matters, Kirsch is asserting the value of literature and a literary culture. If Trilling thought and wrote, frequently, about the… More

Tragedy and Three Novels

– “Tragedy and Three Novels.” Review of A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway (New York: Scribner’s, 1929); Bottom Dogs, by Edward Dahlberg (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1930); The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1929). Symposium 1 (January 1930): 106-14.

Eugene O’Neill

– “Eugene O’Neill.” New Republic 88 (23 September 1936): 376-79.

Matthew Arnold, Poet

– “Matthew Arnold, Poet.” Major British Writers. Edited by G.B. Harrison. 2 volumes. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1954. 2: 419-32.

A version of this essay is in the paperback edition of Trilling’s Matthew Arnold.

Beautiful and Blest

– “Beautiful and Blest.” Review of Great English Short Novels, edited by Cyril Conolly (New York: Dial, 1953); Great French Short Novels, edited by Frederick W. Dupee (New York: Dial, 1952); and Great Russian Short Novels, edited by Philip Rahv (New York: Dial, 1951). Mid-Century 30 (September 1961): 3-9.

Rimbaudelaire

– “Rimbaudelaire.” Review of Arthur Rimbaud, third edition, by Enid Starkie (Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1961); and Baudelaire, by Enid Starkie (New York: New Directions, 1958). Mid-Century 34 (December 1961): 3-10.

Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature

– “Commitment to the Modern: The Problem of Perspective in Literature.” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 64 (7 July 1962): 739-42.

The Wheel

– “The Wheel.” Review of Down There on a Visit, by Christopher Isherwood (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962); and  An Official Rose, by Iris Murdoch (New York: Viking, 1962). Mid-Century 41 (July 1962): 5-10.

James Baldwin

– “James Baldwin.” Review of Another Country, by James Baldwin (New York: Dial, 1962). Mid-Century 44 (September 1962): 5-11.

William Wordsworth

– “William Wordsworth.” Atlantic Brief Lives, edited by Louis Kronenberger (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown, 1971). 882-84.

Uncle Matthew

– Wilson, Edmund. "Uncle Matthew." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. The New Republic, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: But if Mr. Trilling has followed this fashion it is evidently not due to lack of competence. His observations on Arnold’s style are admirably phrased as well as just: “The… More

Trilling’s Matthew Arnold

– Barzun, Jacques. "Trilling's Matthew Arnold." Review of Matthew Arnold, by Lionel Trilling. Columbia University Quarterly, March 1939. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: “The Critic’s business is to carp; the scholar’s business is to bore.” No one, of course, has the courage to honor those maxims in words, but many of us… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Spender, Stephen. "Beyond Liberalism." Commentary, August 1950. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Mr. Trilling thinks the liberal imagination defective, and it is scarcely too much to say that his book might well be entitled “The Liberal Lack of Imagination.” What it… More

Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling

– Howe, Irving. "Liberalism, History, and Mr. Trilling." The Nation. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: Lionel Trilling’s new book of essays, “The Liberal Imagination,” (Viking, $3.50), has as its central purpose a criticism of the liberal mind “as it drifts… More

Beyond Liberalism

– Williams, Raymond. "Beyond Liberalism." The Manchester Guardian," April 1966. Reprinted in Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. 

Excerpt: I had been puzzled for many years to know the source of a particular North Atlantic definition and structure of “the modern.” I had met it repeatedly, at my end of the… More