ABSTRACT
12 October 1935, vol. xii, 10–11
Matthiessen (1902–1950), an American critic, wrote extensively on American literature. ‘The Achievement of T.S. Eliot’, first published in 1935, has since become a standard work. H.A. Mason's review of it in ‘Scrutiny’ (4 December 1935), iv, 311–12, gives a good sense of the ‘Scrutiny’ group's marked antipathy towards what was seen as Eliot's appropriation by an ‘academic’ mentality. ‘It is this success in detail due to careful research (there is a very neat chapter on the “influences”), and this failure in presenting a total valuation that I consider academic.’
