The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage ed. by Frank MacShane and Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage ed. by Donald Watt
John O'Brien

Frank MacShane, ed. Ford Madox Ford: The Critical Heritage. Routledge, 1997. 271 pp. $115.00; Donald Watt, ed. Aldous Huxley: The Critical Heritage. Routledge, 1997. 493 pp. $145.00.

Both of these are reprints, making available again these wonderful collections of criticism that shows what the critical reception was for these authors when their books first came out. For Huxley, you have Frank Kermode calling Island “one of the worst novels ever written.” And the Van Dorens in 1925 praise Lawrence and Huxley because they will carry on the fine tradition of Wells, Galsworthy, and Bennett. Wyndham Lewis attacks Huxley’s Point Counter Point, but then Lewis attacked everyone. Rebecca West and Theodore Dreiser praise Ford’s The Good Soldier, but a number of others did not like it at all. Graham Greene gave a good review to The March of Literature; Greene’s obituary for Ford is also included, as well as one by Sherwood Anderson. These volumes, as well as others that Routledge is reissuing, are invaluable. Their prices will probably restrict them to library purchases, but they should be standard books in any good library. [John O’Brien]