Mr. Wilson is a very productive author; I don't know if he would call Axel's Castle his best book, though he might agree that it is his most influential. If one wanted to get a complete view of his work on the authors discussed in it, one would need to consider later essays as well; but it is more to the present purpose to see Axel's Castle as it stands, unrevised, a testimony to the author's flexibility and diagnostic power at a time when his subject as a whole was considerably more obscure than it is now. The first powerful impression one receives on re-reading the book is that it anticipates a whole era of literary discussion…. Naturally one soon rests in a more comfortable conviction that it also missed quite a lot, and left employment for Mr. Wilson's successors. But his real achievement was to identify, even...