W. H. Auden (1907–73) was quite explicit about the origin of his poetic vocation. In “Making, Knowing and Judging,” a lecture he delivered at Oxford in 1956, Auden recalls that he decided to become a ...

(1974), the Supreme Court further broadened the group who could be maligned by the media to include “limited-purpose public ...

The other program, the subject of this review, appealed to more advanced balletomanes—works by Gianna Reisen, Ulysses Dove, ...

Whatever happened to the Regency gentleman—or rake—who whiled away his days drinking, flirting, and generally getting up to no good? Perhaps his spirit died with Simon Raven (1927–2001), one of the ...

On Vasily Grossman, Richard Estes, seaside art, William Faulkner, museum gardens & more from the world of culture. Richard Estes, Escalator at Penn Station, 2023, Oil on panel, Schoelkopf Gallery.

Seldom can any author have taken Horace’s dictum that the artist should delight and instruct as seriously as did Bernard Shaw. The notion of art for art’s sake, the guiding principle for so many ...

Publishing in the Western world is an enterprise whose success depends on freedom of expression enjoyed in Western countries. Reputable publishers know this, and do not lightly accept restraints on ...

Editors’ note: The following is an edited version of remarks delivered at The New Criterion’s gala on April 22, 2026, honoring Harvey Mansfield with the thirteenth Edmund Burke Award for Service to ...

I t was in 1965, in the heyday of New York City as well as of The New Yorker magazine, that the New York Herald Tribune, in successive Sunday supplements, published a two-part takedown of The New ...

Every culture has a literature that is to some extent subterranean. Much of it deserves to stay there. But certain pieces occasionally bubble to the surface. Invariably this happens because the work ...