Van Wyck Brooks has now suffered the fate of many a good writer before him. Beginning as an opposition critic, read by a minority of the public, he has lived to become a popular author, read by immense numbers of people and awarded a Pulitzer prize—with the result that the ordinary reviewers are praising him indiscriminately and the highbrows are trying to drop him. (p. 10)

Let me begin then by stating some of the objections which are being made to Brooks's books on New England by those readers to whom it is most distasteful to see him become the darling of the women's clubs.

1. Brooks's work falls into two distinct divisions, with the break just before his volume on Emerson. The early Brooks was somber and despairing…. This period reached its nadir of gloom in the essay on The Literary Life in America …, in which Brooks announced...