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“... all literary critics (including Lentricchia) are supposed to do, I – well, let me quote Winton Dean: There is a big difference between the comparatively rare occasions on which Handel passed off others’ compositions as his own and the far more numerous instances of his using the ideas of others as a jumping-off point for fresh composition. It may seem ...”

“... get each other wrong, then learn to get each other right, and in the process learn a great deal about themselves, generally humbling. Marriage is the reward paid to these now better-adjusted heroines and heroes. The reason that we, as readers, root so happily and swiftly for the heroines is that the novels turn them into readers, too: Elizabeth and ...”

“... for examples of what he calls ‘a genuinely critical impulse’, Joseph North picks out D.A. Miller’s subtle analysis of Jane Austen’s prose. ‘The critical voice speaking here is quite remarkable for the finesse with which it mimics the rhetorical effect it is describing,’ North writes, referring to a passage in which ...”

“... of the American musical has been to combine the forces of the minstrel show, the operetta, the drag act, the issue drama, the boulevard farce and the political rally on a single stage and still find a way to make itself acceptable in the marketplace. In many ways, the musical is no different from 19th-century opera, another collaborative musical-theatre ...”

“... to hang a theory. It’s also made him famous for things he never said (‘Elementary, my dear Watson!’; ‘Quick, Watson, the needle!’). What’s the explanation? Edmund Wilson’s verdict – ‘literature on a humble but not ignoble level’ offering ‘imagination and literary taste’ – isn’t much help. Nor is Raymond Chandler’s snub ...”