Edmund Wilson

In some of his best essays, however, Wilson is a master of fine distinctions, probing for weakness here, admiring a subtle strength there, sometimes reversing at the last moment, and with an unexpected bravura flourish, what appeared to be a sharp and definitive judgment against a writer. --Algis Valiunas, The Critic Who Sometimes Exists, Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2008, review of Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s and Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s, by Edmund Wilson


Recommended reading:
by Edmund Wilson at Reading Rat


Other works online: Internet Archive


Criticism (articles, essays, reviews):

Castle adamant by Denis Donoghue, review of Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s and Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s by Edmund Wilson, The New Criterion, December 2007

A Shaper of the Canon Gets His Place in It by Charles McGrath, review of Edmund Wilson: Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s: The Triple Thinkers, The Wound and the Bow, Classics and Commercials, Uncollected Reviews, Library of America, The New York Times, October 7, 2007

Ghost Sonate: Edmund Wilson’s adventure with Communism, by Alex Ross, The New Yorker, March 24, 2003

The Edmund Wilson centenary by Hilton Kramer, review of Edmund Wilson: A Biography by Jeffrey Meyers, The New Criterion, May 1995