SOURCE: Pritchard, William H. “Ian Hamilton 1939-2001.” Sewanee Review 110, no. 1 (winter 2002): 180-82.

In the following essay, Pritchard asserts that Hamilton distinguished himself most significantly as an essayist, poetry reviewer, and editor of literary journals.

The literary world is very much the poorer for the passing of Ian Hamilton, as gifted a poetry critic and editorial presence as we are likely to encounter. In this country he may have been known mostly as the writer whom J. D. Salinger prevented from publishing the biography Hamilton submitted to his publisher. (The book that ensued in 1988, In Search of J. D. Salinger, made necessity the mother of invention.) But, although Hamilton was a good biographer—notably of Robert Lowell—his real distinctiveness came in the essays and reviews he wrote about poets from the early sixties until his death. And from 1962 to 1979 he kept afloat two literary magazines—the Review (1962-...