F. Scott Fitzgerald famously called Wilson his "intellectual conscience," and some considered him the twentieth century's preeminent man of letters. From his perch as TNR's literary editor, and then as a roving correspondent, critic Edmund Wilson was in large part responsible for the introduction of literary modernism to American culture. (He also discovered or solidified the reputations of Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, along with numerous others, and wrote one of the century's seminal intellectual histories.) Below, we've collected several of Wilson's major magazine pieces from the archives:
"Still Life," November 10, 1926. The death of a flapper.
"The Old Conviviality and the New," May 12, 1926. New Orleans during the Derby.
"Reunion," April 27, 1927. Gin shots and the memory of World War I.
"Portrait of a Sage," May 1, 1929. A genuine intellectual and his lovely daughters.
"Mr. More and the Mithraic Bull," May 26, 1937. The Great Man remembers T.S. Eliot.