Tag: Self

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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

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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

Art, Will, and Necessity

– "Art, Will, and Necessity." Lecture at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, 1973.
Excerpt: It is one of the defining characteristics of our contemporary civilization that in the degree we cherish art and make it the object of our piety we see it as perpetually… 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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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

Art, Will, and Necessity

– "Art, Will, and Necessity." Lecture at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, 1973.
Excerpt: It is one of the defining characteristics of our contemporary civilization that in the degree we cherish art and make it the object of our piety we see it as perpetually… 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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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

Art, Will, and Necessity

– "Art, Will, and Necessity." Lecture at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, 1973.
Excerpt: It is one of the defining characteristics of our contemporary civilization that in the degree we cherish art and make it the object of our piety we see it as perpetually… 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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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

Art, Will, and Necessity

– "Art, Will, and Necessity." Lecture at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, 1973.
Excerpt: It is one of the defining characteristics of our contemporary civilization that in the degree we cherish art and make it the object of our piety we see it as perpetually… 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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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).

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

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

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

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

Art, Will, and Necessity

– "Art, Will, and Necessity." Lecture at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, 1973.
Excerpt: It is one of the defining characteristics of our contemporary civilization that in the degree we cherish art and make it the object of our piety we see it as perpetually… 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

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

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

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

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.