Tag: Modernism

Topics

Books

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

In Defense of Zola

– Originally published as “Zola’s Quality.” The Griffin 2, no. 1 (August 1952).

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

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.

“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

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

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Why Trilling Matters

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

In Defense of Zola

– Originally published as “Zola’s Quality.” The Griffin 2, no. 1 (August 1952).

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

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.

“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

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

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Why Trilling Matters

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

In Defense of Zola

– Originally published as “Zola’s Quality.” The Griffin 2, no. 1 (August 1952).

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

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.

“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

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

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Why Trilling Matters

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

In Defense of Zola

– Originally published as “Zola’s Quality.” The Griffin 2, no. 1 (August 1952).

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

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.

“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

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

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Why Trilling Matters

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

In Defense of Zola

– Originally published as “Zola’s Quality.” The Griffin 2, no. 1 (August 1952).

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

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.

“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

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

Mind in the Modern World

– "Mind in the Modern World." The first Thomas Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Spring 1972. Then published in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 17, 1972, 1381-1385. Subsequently published as a small book by New York: The Viking Press, 1973.
Excerpt: In 1946, in the last year of his life, H. G. Wells published a little book which is surely one of the saddest and possibly one of the most portentous documents of our century. Much… More

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Why Trilling Matters

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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