Forms of Attention

Frank Kermode (1919-2010) was a British literary critic who taught English literature at University College London, the University of Cambridge, Columbia University, and Harvard University. His criticism was regularly featured in the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, and he was the author of many books, including The Sense of an Ending; The Classic; The Genesis of Secrecy; and, most recently, Concerning E. M. Forster. Kermode was knighted in 1991.

"[Kermode] was drawn to the entanglements of the text and its rational mysteries rather than some scaffold of theory.... He protected the reader's freedom to be interested in whatever was interesting. That meant writing a prose that was never wholly academic and over the years became more and more open to the intersection of literature and the lives we're actually living." (New York Times) "Kermode's volume has the virtue of a lecturer's accessible style designed for a listening audience. It is also self-consciously spare of 'naked criticism.' There is, nonetheless, an abundance of learned commentary, steady substance, and unveiled critical excellence. Which is to say the volume is a useful and engaging reflection of its learned author." (London Review of Books)"