Book reviewing has lost its serrated edge

Frances Wilson - Literary Review

Daggers Drawn

Book reviewing, we can all agree, has lost its serrated edge. Literary critics were once legislators who ripped the masks from charlatans and hailed our future leaders, but today's reviewers are more concerned with watching their backs than sharpening their pens. The bloodbath has become a featherbed.

Two centuries ago, in the glory days of the literary magazine, the critic was regarded as a superior being. 'This will never do,' thundered Francis Jeffrey of Wordsworth's The Excursion. Jeffrey was writing in the Edinburgh Review, which invented the review-like essay and the essay-like review. Edinburgh reviewers, instructed Jeffrey - one of the magazine's founders - must go beyond the 'humble task of pronouncing on the mere literary merits of the works that came before it'. As such, the Edinburgh house style became known as 'slashing' and the effect on readers was electrifying. Given the solar system to assess, joked Sydney Smith, the Edinburgh Review would conclude that it showed 'bad light - planets too distant - pestered with comets - feeble contrivance - could make a better with great ease'.
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