NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

Photo: Nigel Beale.

" Robert Fulford is a Toronto author, journalist, broadcaster, and editor. He writes a weekly column for The National Post and is a frequent contributor to Toronto Life, Canadian Art, and CBC radio and television. His books include Best Seat in the House: Memoirs of a Lucky Man (1988), Accidental City: The Transformation of Toronto (1995), and Toronto Discovered (1998)." This is how the man describes himself on his website. I'd only add that I think he is the best of his kind.

I sat down with him recently at his home in Toronto to talk about his long, distinguished career as a Canadian critic/journalist, and about evaluative criticism and what matters most in a book. Here’s our conversation:

Subscribe to the Biblio File Podcast here

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Kevin Gilmartin is a professor of English at California Institute of Technology, and visiting professor at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at York University in England.  He is the author of Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1996) and Writing against Revolution: Literary Conservatism in Britain, 1790-1832 (Cambridge, 2007), and the co-editor with James Chandler of Romantic Metropolis: The Urban Scene of British Culture, 1780-1840 (Cambridge, 2005).  His essays have appeared in such journals as Studies in Romanticism, ELH, and The Journal of British Studies, and in several essay collections.  His research interests include Romantic literature, the politics of literary culture, the history of the periodical press and of print culture, and intersections between literary expression and public activism.

We talked recently at length about 18th century British essayist/critic William Hazlitt. 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Larry Mathews is a Professor of English at Memorial University in Newfoundland and a highly regarded literary critic. We speak here about the role of the literary critic, the 'top 10' Newfoundland novels, canonicity, quality, scope and prominence, 'importance', subjectivity, irony as a selection criteria, thesis mongering, the anxiety of influence and Harold Bloom. Some of Newfoundland's best known authors, including Lisa Moore and Michael Winter, started off their careers in Larry's classroom.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download