Upon publication, the series was hailed as "a one-man Library of Babel." The Times Literary Supplement called it "the most ambitious work of literary history since Taine."
This bias means that certain figures are unfairly dismissed. For example, Wellek reduces Freud to a footnote, claiming his literary interpretations are "amateurish allegorizing." Conversely, he devotes forty pages to the obscure German theorist Friedrich Schlegel.
The series tracks the evolution of critical thought from the disintegration of neoclassical systems to the emergence of modern critical movements. The Later Eighteenth Century Volume 2: The Romantic Age Volume 3: The Age of Transition Volume 4: The Later Nineteenth Century Volume 5: English Criticism, 1900–1950 Volume 6: American Criticism, 1900–1950
Focus: T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis, and William Empson. This is arguably the most accessible volume. Wellek documents the rise of New Criticism, close reading, and the "heresy of paraphrase."
