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Take a Journey Through 125 Years of Book Review History
March 15, 2021
March 15, 2021
1896
1905
Shortly before the publication of “The House of Mirth,” this portrait of Edith Wharton became the first photograph to appear on the cover of the Book Review.
1905
Shortly before the publication of “The House of Mirth,” this portrait of Edith Wharton became the first photograph to appear on the cover of the Book Review.
1918
To illustrate the 1,562 books featured in spring publishing catalogues, the early Book Review employed an infographic.
Reviewing the Book Review
As the publication celebrates its 125th anniversary, Parul Sehgal, a staff critic and former editor at the Book Review, delves into the archives to critically examine its legacy in full.
Credit.Leigh Wells
Feb. 26, 2021
Halfway through “Lolita,” Humbert Humbert relaxed, triumphant and a mere pinch of pages away from his downfall stops to extol the wonders of America. He has dragged his 12-year-old quarry on a road trip across the country, a perversion of a honeymoon. He slips into French to marvel at all they have seen. “
Nous connûmes,” he purrs, borrowing “a Flaubertian intonation”
Segregation in Barbados works just well enough to be endurable October 16 1965 JAMES BANNERMAN
A BLACK CHILD VIEWS WHITE TRUTH
Segregation in Barbados works just well enough to be endurable
JAMES BANNERMAN
Bannerman on books
“THE WAVES RAGED and our voices raged like the waves. The headmaster was sweating; but it was a joyful sweat which was pouring down his face.”
That is part of a description of a class of little Negro boys in a school in Barbados singing “Rule, Britannia!” It comes from the first chapter of a new novel. Amongst Thistles and Thorns (McClelland and Stewart, $4.95). I’ve quoted it because the author, Austin C. Clarke, presents it as the words of one of the little boys nine-year-old Milton Sobers, who is the narrator of the whole book. No child of that age could be so articulate. Therefore Milton ought to be grotesquely unbelievable, and the book should in consequence ring false. But it doesn’t. Somehow