Some Diversions of a Man of Letters

Edmund Gosse was the ideal witness to literary reputation: a man who had watched Wordsworth celebrated, then dismissed, then resurrected; who had seen Raleigh oscillate between hero and villain for three centuries. This collection of essays, written in the final years of his life, offers the peculiar pleasure of watching a master critic think through the strange fortunes of writers. Gosse writes with elegant wryness about how taste betrays us, how every generation rewrites the canon, and how the books we call 'timeless' are simply those that have survived their own unpopularity. The essays range across English literature, but they share a single preoccupation: the uncomfortable truth that literary fame is not merit, but fashion wearing a wig. This is criticism as memoir, as cultural history, as quiet protest against the tyranny of the new. For readers who wonder why their favorite forgotten authors fell silent, or why terrible books once ruled, Gosse offers no answers but considerable consolation.