Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) was an American literary critic, author, and University Professor at Columbia University. Among the most influential of his many works are two collections of essays, The Liberal Imagination and The Opposing Self; a critical study of E. M. Forster; and one novel, The Middle of the Journey.
Literature and the Professors: A Symposium
Autumn 1940
Literature and Power
Sometimes we of the English-teaching profession must wonder whether our social function is anything more than pious—whether we are expected to do more than perform levitical chores in the temple […]
Fiction
Fall 2011
The Snake Story
Introduction: Notes by James Trilling on an untitled, unpublished story by Lionel Trilling, “The Snake Story.” My parents, Lionel and Diana Trilling, were married in June 1929. In lieu […]
Special Anniversary Feature: Excerpts from the War Years
Winter 1989
Literature and Power
From the Autumn 1940 issue. Sometimes we of the English-teaching profession must wonder whether our social function is anything more than pious—whether we are expected to do more than perform […]
Nonfiction
Autumn 1953
Little Dorrit
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 […]
Nonfiction
Summer 1950
Wordsworth and the Iron Time
[The 100th anniversary of Wordsworth’s death was observed by Princeton and Cornell Universities during the days of April 21-23. Mr. Trilling’s paper was delivered at Princeton, and Mr. Ransom’s at […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1948
The Legend of the Lion
The Legend Of The Master: Henry James compiled by Simon Nowell-Smith. Scribner’s. $3.00 How dreary to be somebody! But not for the reasons that Emily Dickinson advances, not because […]
Nonfiction
Winter 1948
Manners, Morals, and the Novel¹
The invitation that was made to me to address you this evening was couched in somewhat uncertain terms. Time, place and cordiality were perfectly clear, but when it came to […]
Nonfiction
Autumn 1946
The Life of the Novel
Nowadays we hear a great deal about the decay of the novel, and people often speak of it as it were a natural thing, the inevitable petering-out of a form […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1946
Short Notice: Psychology of Sex Relations
Psychology Of Sex Relations by Theodor Reik. Farrar and Rinehart. $3.00. “They taught us,” said a young person of my acquaintance, “that sex is dirty but love makes it beautiful.” […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1945
A Derivative Devil
The Devil’s Share by Denis de Rougemont. Pantheon. $2.50. Denis de Rougemont’s Devil is designed to startle, but many readers will meet him with a pleased and placid recognition. […]
Book Reviews
Autumn 1942
Artists and the “Societal” Function
Writers in Crisis by Maxwell Geismar. Houghton Mifflin. $3.00 Directions in Contemporary Literature by Philo Buck, Jr. Oxford. $3.00 The Novel and Society by N. Elizabeth Monroe. University of North […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1942
E. M. Forster
… the word BARACH, say the learned, is both to bless and curse. —Dryden. M. Forster is for me the only living novelist who can be read again and again […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1942
Greatness with One Fault in It
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans. Houghton Mifflin. $3.50 I feel sure that this is a great book. To its greatness both […]
Nonfiction
Summer 1941
Sherwood Anderson
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 […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1940
Mr. Lewis Goes Soft
Bethel Merriday by Sinclair Lewis. Doubleday, Doran. $2.50 In the unhappy story of Sinclair Lewis’s later career, Bethel Merriday is another and a redundant episode. To call it a […]
Nonfiction
Spring 1940
The Legacy of Sigmund Freud: An Appraisal: Therapeutic, Literary and Aesthetic, Philosophical
I. Therapeutic By Alexander Reid Martin The concept of the unconscious, the creation of the analytic technique of free association, and the development of a specific form of doctor-patient […]
Book Reviews
Winter 1940
Determinist and Mystic
Adventures of a Young Man by John Dos Passos. Harcourt Brace. $2.50 The Bridegroom Cometh by Waldo Frank. Doubleday Doran. $2.75 Some time ago, in a piece on U. S. A., […]
Book Reviews
Summer 1939
Feminine without the Charm
Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson. Four Volumes. Knopf. $3 per volume or $10 the set. I very much dislike this work but this is a judgment which, for two reasons, I […]