Defining literary criticism: scholarship, authority, and the possession of literary knowledge, 1880-2002

Outlining the controversies that have surrounded the academic discipline of English Literature since its institutionalization in the late nineteenth century, this important book draws on a range of archival sources.

It addresses issues that are central to the identity of academic English - how the subject came into existence, and what makes it a specialist discipline of knowledge - in a manner that illuminates many of the crises that have affected the development of modern English studies.

Atherton also addresses contemporary arguments about the teaching of literary criticism, including an examination of the reforms to A-Level literature.