History
The TLS first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to The Times, but became a separate publication in 1914. Many distinguished writers have been contributors, including T. S. Eliot, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, but reviews were normally anonymous until 1974, during which year signed reviews were gradually introduced under the editorship of John Gross.
This aroused great controversy at the time. “Anonymity had once been appropriate when it was a general rule at other publications, but it had ceased to be so,” Gross said. “In addition I personally felt that reviewers ought to take responsibility for their opinions.”
Martin Amis was a member of the editorial staff early in his career. Philip Larkin's poem Aubade, effectively his final poetic work, was first published in the Christmas-week issue of the TLS in 1977. While it has long been regarded as one of the world's pre-eminent critical publications, its history is not without gaffes. For instance, the publication missed James Joyce entirely and only commented negatively on Lucian Freud from 1945 until 1978, when a portrait of his appeared on the cover.
The TLS cooperates closely with The Times; its online version is hosted on the Times website, and its editorial offices are based in Times House, Pennington Street, London. The current editor is Peter Stothard, a former editor of The Times itself. He succeeded Ferdinand Mount in 2003.
In recent decades, the TLS has included essays, reviews and poems by John Ashbery, Italo Calvino, Patricia Highsmith, Milan Kundera, Philip Larkin, Mario Vargas Llosa, Joseph Brodsky, Gore Vidal, Orhan Pamuk, Geoffrey Hill, Seamus Heaney, among others.
Many writers have described the publication as indispensable. For example, prize-winning Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa said: “I have been reading the TLS since I learned English 40 years ago. It is the most serious, authoritative, witty, diverse and stimulating cultural publication in all the five languages I speak.”
Read more about this topic: The Times Literary Supplement
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)