In Defence of the Imagination

“Dame Helen is on the offensive, attacking, with the greatest gusto, the latest fads of the new criticism… Learned, lucid, fearless, and funny, the Oxford emeritus professor is at war with pretentiousness and presumption.”—The New Yorker

“Her pages shine with learning, with her own pleasure in literature and her own perceptions: there is nothing negative or merely destructive in her criticisms.”—The Observer Review