The second edition of this lively and trenchant one-volume history of literary criticism in English includes new assessments of the work of T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis, the American New Critics, Northrop Frye, Roman Jakobson, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Virginia Woolf and others. Authors and Authority traces the connections between critical debate and the changing forms of literary culture from the Neoclassical period to the latest manifestations of literary theory, feminist criticism and cultural studies. From reviews of the first edition:

'A most important study.' - British Book News
'Valuable and suggestive.' - Poetry Nation Review
'Consistently balanced, judicious and acute - massively erudite without ever being overpowering.' - M.Fagg, Times Educational Supplement