21 APRIL 1961, page 28

Hick Napoleons

Edison: A Biography. By Matthew Josephson. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 42s.) Thomas Wolfe: A Biography. By Elizabeth Nowell. (Heinemann, 42s.) THOMAS EntsoN. a strikingly handsome......

Iscariot's Offspring

EDGAR ROSENBERG cannot bring himself to call his book a study of Jews in the English novel. The whole point, he argues bitingly, is that Eng- lish fiction has scarcely contained......

Tennyson Unchallenged

THESE are inflationary times in criticism. Super- latives are now the mark of the true champions and connoisseurs of poetry. How should readers choose from among so much......