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  • The Critic Magazine

    Bring back the panjandrums

    Oct 28, 2021 3 minutes

    THIRTY YEARS AGO, when the Secret Author was a wideeyed young shaver cutting his teeth on the broadsheet arts sections, publishers’ catalogues were full of big, serious books about contemporary literature by big, serious critics keen on laying down the law.

    The early 1990s was boom time for this particular genre: Lorna Sage’s (1992), Malcolm Bradbury’s , D.J. Taylor’s (both 1993). It was a golden age for the survey, the judgment and above all the spectacle of the pundit who stood on top of Mount

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