Editions of American Writers, 1963: A Preliminary Survey

Extract

That this has become an age of criticism is a commonplace. But that the very fact of our critical concern has also produced in the United States a generation of sensitive and, for historical and technical reasons, uniquely competent editors of literary texts is far less generally known. Critical concentration on the verbal subtlety of novelists as well as poets has strengthened the desire to read “clear text.” Attention paid to textual revisions has sharpened critical insight just as regard for the whole effects of whole works has enriched response. The need to know all a writer wrote in order to interpret truly any part of it is once more recognized as essential by the serious critic. New editions of letters and collections of criticism appear. Critics compile bibliographies. Biography and literary history flourish.