This collection brings together a group of Wallace Robson's most important essays, both published and unpublished, and carries an introduction reviewing the practice of criticism and critical theory today. The authors and works treated in this volume include "Hamlet", "The Faerie Queen", "Paradise lost", Johnson as poet, Romantic verse, Tennyson, Dickens, Henry James, Kipling, Chesterton and Raymond Chandler. Robson's previous publications include "Critical Essays" (1966), "The Signs Among Us" (1968), "Modern English Literature" (1972), "The Definition of Literature" (1982), and "A Prologue to English Literature" (1986).