Critic
He then took up literary work in London. He reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement, which led to his celebrated review of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. J. C. Squire published him in the London Mercury, and Desmond MacCarthy as literary editor of the New Statesman gave him work.
He started the Calendar of Modern Letters literary review, now highly regarded, in March 1925. It lasted until July 1927, assisted by Douglas Garman and then Bertram Higgins, and contributions from his cousin C. H. Rickword. The Scrutinies books of collected pieces from it were a succes d'estime; the purpose of the publication was a mass killing of the sacred cows of Edwardian literature (G. K. Chesterton, John Galsworthy, John Masefield, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells). Its undoubted influence as a precursor of later criticism was very marked in the early days of Scrutiny, the magazine founded a few years later by F. R. Leavis and Q. D. Leavis. Rickword also wrote for that publication.
Read more about this topic: Edgell Rickword
Famous quotes containing the word critic:
“A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that “the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.””
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“A critic who uses new quotations is making important changes.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music—his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting—that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)