Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Brophy, Brigid (Antonia) - Victor Strauss

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VICTOR STRAUSS

Inside every dinner conversation there is a bad book struggling to get out. Acting on this proposition Brophy, [her husband Michael Levey and Charles Osborne] elected to rescue their table talk from the wine lees in which it should properly have drowned…. Not content with seeing their roguish project into hard-covers [Fifty Works of English Literature We Could Do Without], the authors have also installed a preface conceived in a mood of pretension that complements the dreary brew of facetiousness and intolerance that is to come…. The ardent trio then dispatch from memory such well-thumbed books as The Dream of Gerontius, Aurora Leigh and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: with peevish zeal they press on to abuse Hamlet, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and a number of other popular works. (p. 722)

Through the drollery and affectation it is difficult to detect any principles the authors may be applying. Authors are...

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1. Introduction
2. The Times Literary Supplement
3. Gene Baro
4. Pearl Kazin
5. Dan Wickenden
6. Charles J. Rolo
7. Maurice Richardson
8. The Times Literary Supplement
9. Joseph L. Quinn
10. Martin Tucker
11. Eve Auchincloss
12. Naomi Bliven
13. The Times Literary Supplement
14. Anthony Burgess
15. Victor Strauss
16. Anthony Burgess
17. Alan Levensohn
18. Edward Weeks
19. Joyce Carol Oates
20. Time
21. Hermione Lee
22. Alan Hollinghurst
23. Marilyn Butler
24. Copyright