Common Reading: Critics, Historians, Publics.

Common Reading: Critics, Historians, Publics. Stefan Collini. Oxford University Press. [pounds sterling]25.00. ix 4- 368 pages. ISBN 978-0-19-929678-1. This is an interesting and sometimes stimulating collection of essays, most of which have already appeared in print. The exceptions are the Introduction, chapters 4, 10 and 12 (never before published) and chapters 21 and 22 (which have been extended). The essays in Part I are 'exercises in intellectual portraiture' and the fifteen included deal with a variety of twentieth century writers including VS. Pritchett, Huxley, Rebecca West, Orwell, Stephen Spender, A.L. Rowse, Sir Arthur Bryant, E.P. Thompson, Roger Scniton and others. The second part 'Reading Matters', has nine essays which take wider views of literature and intellectual

life: the idealisation of 'Victorian Culture' (a healthy reminder to those only concerned with "high1 culture), the general periodical, authors as celebrities, reading Tor self-education, British 'culture' from 1945 to 2000, the relationship between biography and elites in the case of H.L.A. Hart and Andre Malraux, the 'new' D.N.B. and 'universities and their publics7. (A.C.)