One of the curiosities of literary study today is how thoroughly the titan-critics of the mid-20th century have disappeared. Does any literature graduate student feel he must read The Well-Wrought Urn ...

A RECENT CASUAL, DISMISSIVE reference to Lionel Trilling recalled to me the man who was the most eminent intellectual figure of his time–certainly in New York intellectual circles, but also beyond ...

Letters of Lionel Trilling (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), 464 pp., $35.00. Lionel Trilling’s eminence was so great, however, that he reached near celebrity status as a literary critic.