William Crary Brownell had the misfortune of living for over a generation into the twentieth century, well beyond the late-Victorian milieu in which his critical temper worked with synthetic ease and assurance. Increasingly anachronistic as a man of letters, his gentlemanly gaze was for the most part backward, and selectively so, for the subjects of his criticism were all established, if not canonical, names in Anglo-American literature; of these, only Henry James was his contemporary. Yet Brownell is indisputably an important American exponent of criticism that provides a rounded estimate of a writer's art. He took for his central, guiding principle the significance of personality as it determines literary expression. This is merely to remark Brownell's indebtedness to French critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, who had made the study of an author's works an expedition into the remotest recesses of his character. Further, Brownell believed that literature must contribute something...