Kilclief & Other Essays – Dublin Review of Books September 2020
Why read a book reviewer’s back catalogue? Such questions will inevitably surface when a volume like this appears. Kilclief & Other Essays features a selection of literary critic Patricia Craig’s writings – short essays, critical introductions and, predominantly, reviews – originally published in the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review of Books, The Irish Times and various other venues, from the early 1980s to the present day. But are these not simply curiosities of literary history, time-locked to the publication-day aura of their original subjects? Do they hold their intrinsic value across time? Why assemble them in this (admittedly very beautiful) hardback format, when we can now retrieve the digital imprint in an instant?