Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement Book

Derwent May's centenary history of the Times Literary Supplement: Critical Times: The History of The Times Literary Supplement signifies its importance (and its self-importance). For a hundred years the Times Literary Supplement has enjoyed a pre-eminent status among highbrow writers and reviewers in the UK. For 75 years of its history, the TLS published mostly anonymous reviews, "coming out", as May puts it, only when the pressure for transparency became impossible to resist. However, a database of all the paper's reviewers--anonymous and signed--has now been created, although May has used the paper's own records of contributors for his chronological study of the paper. The result is somewhat disappointing. Instead of a behind-the-scenes look at the mechanics of one of the most influential papers around, we get a year-by-year resumé of who said what about whom. Readers wondering about how books were selected for review, or about the relationship between the TLS and commercial publishers, or readers simply wanting a quantitative survey of the changing subject-matter of the review, will have to look elsewhere or do the research themselves, via the database. Although the great and the good of the literary scene are all here-"Q", Woolf, Eliot, Amis major and minor, Berlin, etc--and most of the famous academic skirmishes get good coverage (communism, science vs. culture, post-structuralism), the book is too list-like a treatment. This is very much a history of the TLS by the TLS and for the TLS, and the main joy for many in reading it will be to see whether they get a mention. --Miles Taylor.Read More