This chapter explores the range of essayistic writing in nineteenth-century newspapers: leaders (political and topical in focus and the principal genre of the Victorian daily and weekly press), middles (a shorter version of the leader and characteristic of some weeklies), correspondence columns from journalists at home and abroad, and reviews of both books and theatre. It charts the expansion of the press at mid-century following the abolition of the ‘Taxes on Knowledge’ and an influx of literary talent that raised the quality of newspapers, and it notes the transformation of newspapers at the end of the century with the creation of literary pages, supplements, and special features (following the demise of many quarterly reviews and monthly magazines). The second half of the chapter examines the newspaper writing of John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, and argues that each made a unique contribution to the newspapers of their day.

Vaughan Williams’s recorded music is a vast subject that has scarcely been studied. This chapter presents a first major step into this research area. It considers early recordings of his works from the 1920s and 1930s, addressing how they were shaped by the technical limitations and market forces of the British industry during this era. Brief playing times and poor sound quality for these recordings meant that art songs and folk-song arrangements dominate the composer’s early catalogue. Early recordings of larger works were often limited primarily to occasions of special advocacy and funding. Later, as demand, technology, and company resources allowed, the number and range of Vaughan Williams’s compositions on record increased. This chapter also shows how reviews of these early recordings reflected overall attitudes about his music, with reviewers expressing mixed reactions to perceived folk and modal aspects of the few works they were able to hear on record. Since a fuller catalogue of Vaughan Williams’s recorded music emerged only over decades, the vicissitudes of the industry cannot be separated from the development of his overall reception during this crucial time.

This chapter provides an introduction to how Vaughan Williams’s music was received in interwar continental Europe, particularly within music magazines and scholarly periodicals. It is in two sections. The first considers the different contexts in which it was heard: choral performances of the Mass and folk-song arrangements, pieces played at International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) festivals, and performances of large-scale works in ‘seasonal’ orchestral concerts and recitals. For the most part, Vaughan Williams’s music was well received, even at ISCM festivals, where he might have been overshadowed by more radical figures; and the increased number of European performances that he received during the period reflected a growing interest among leading continental performers. The chapter then examines some of the writing on Vaughan Williams by continental critics, primarily those from France and Germany. These reveal two contrasting but not necessarily mutually exclusive narratives: one in which Vaughan Williams is presented as the leader of a new English school of composition that is underpinned by the language of English folk song, and another in which Vaughan Williams is considered in a pan-European context, where the influence of French impressionism is more keenly felt. A table of selected performances is also included.

Salman Rushdie is perhaps one of the most recognizable global literary writers. This emerged in the early 1980s when his work was seen as the quintessential exponent of the Indian novel in English. Distinctive marketing campaigns by publishers, as well as speculation about his advances and publishing deals, have further fuelled the success of the Rushdie brand. This chapter considers issues of reception that relate to Rushdie’s position in the literary marketplace and combines a review of some of the available sales figures with readers’ comments about Rushdie’s novels on online book reviewing sites. It addresses Rushdie’s position in the context of the consolidation of the Anglo-American publishing world through a series of mergers in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s and the significant impact this has had on the way in which literary works are disseminated. It considers what readers’ reviews of his novels and the existence of a critical apparatus, including annotations and study guides, reveal about the classification of Rushdie’s fiction and the constitution of his audience, and it reviews concepts of reading, not reading, and partial reading with a view to the Rushdie affair.

This chapter focuses on the ways in which Salman Rushdie’s works have been adapted for stage, screen, and radio. Focusing on adaptations of Midnight’s Children for the RSC, Haroun and the Sea of Stories for the National Theatre, radio versions such as Midnight’s Children for BBC Radio Four, a proposed Netflix serialization of the novel, as well as its film adaptation, this chapter considers the pitfalls and strengths in the processes of adaptation, on which Rushdie has written himself on the occasion of his writing the screenplay for the novel for Deepa Mehta’s film adaptation. The chapter considers also the audiobook versions of major novels, such Art Malik’s reading of The Moor’s Last Sigh or Rushdie’s own reading of Haroun and the Sea of Stories and East, West, and some of the failed adaptions, such as Raul Ruiz’s attempt to produce a film of The Ground Beneath Her Feet. In so doing, the chapter considers the transposition of Rushdie’s work into other media and highlights how their unique originary artistic forms make them a difficult adaptive proposition.

The Bayesian approach is a way to interpret a study within the context of the entire literature. It is an important method to use so that a single study isn’t overestimated. It also allows for input of clinical experience.

In this chapter, we analyze the economics behind the use of big data and, in particular, ratings, reviews, and recommendations that have become mainstream on digital platforms. We start in Section 2.1 by analyzing rating and review systems. These systems provide platform users with information about either products or their counterparties to a transaction. Of crucial importance is, of course, the informativeness of these systems, which depends on the users’ actions. We then turn, in Section 2.2, to recommender systems, which aim to reduce users’ search cost by pointing them towards transactions that may better match their tastes. Besides the ability of such systems to generate network effects, we also discuss their effects on the distribution of sales between “mass-market” and “niche” products. Finally, in Section 2.3, we complement the analysis of ratings and recommender systems by uncovering additional channels through which big data may generate network effects and other self-reinforcing processes on platform.

In letters to friends and in interviews later in life, Elizabeth Bishop repeatedly made clear her low opinion of critical writing. At the same time, much of her own criticism and review work is audacious, original and witty, particularly the long essays she completed as an undergraduate student at Vassar. She also admired the work of contemporary poet-critics like William Empson and Randall Jarrell and once pitched for the job as poetry reviewer of The New Yorker. Close analysis of her own prose and poetry demonstrates the extent to which her own writing was itself a form of informal criticism. She engaged with and incorporated the ideas and words of literary critics into her poetry throughout her career, rebuffing reductive assessments of her writing as “calm” and “modest.”

This chapter traces the crtical reception of Roth's Portnoy’s Complaint, released to significant controversy. While many deemed the novel to be brilliant and hilarious, others found it offensive. Many readers were taken aback by its unabashed engagement with sex: protagonist Alex Portnoy speaks frankly about many aspects of his sexual life, particularly his propensity for masturbation. As is the case with many of Roth’s works, readers interpreted the protagonist to be almost wholly autobiographical. Moreover, many Jewish critics and rabbis, specifically, felt that the book’s material further revealed Roth to be a “self-hating Jew."Yet for many of the same reasons that it was criticized, Portnoy’s Complaint has also been hailed as one of Roth’s signature works, which exemplifies a coming into his unique voice and trademark sense of humor.

Nathan Zuckerman is one of Roth’s most central characters, and any thorough study of Roth and his work requires an exploration of Zuckerman’s role in Roth’s development as a writer. In many ways, Roth’s career, his concerns, and his confrontation with illness and age, are reflected and refracted through Zuckerman, This chapter addresses the interpretation of Zuckerman as one of Roth’s “alter-egos”, from the time he first appears in 1974 in My Life as a Man, to his role in novels now collected as “Zuckerman Bound” [The Ghost Writer (1979), Zuckerman Unbound (1981), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), and The Prague Orgy (1985)] to The Counterlife (1986), and then the “American Trilogy”—American Pastoral (1997), I Married A Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000)—before bidding farewell in 2007’s Exit Ghost.

This first chapter on thel contexts of Roth’s work provides an overview of these responses in Roth’s early years as a published writer, addressing the accolades for works such as Goodbye, Columbus, as well as the pushback early works received from members of the Jewish community, who deemed elements of his early short stories to be anti-Semitic. The chapter also briefly addresses Roth’s output after the largely positive reception of Goodbye, Columbus – namely, Letting Go (1962) and When She Was Good (1967) – providing an overview of the more mixed reviews received by these works, and Roth’s own struggle to find his voice as a young author.

This chapter will address the place of the “Philip Roth” novels—which include The Facts (1988), Deception (1990), Patrimony (1991), Operation Shylock (1993), and The Plot Against America (2004)—within Roth’s career at large, as well as the critical response to those novels. In addition to being among the most evident examples of Roth’s postmodern techniques, this particular categorization of books is also unique because, unlike Zuckerman and Kepesh, the identity of the character “Philip Roth” himself shifts from book to book. For instance, while the “Philip Roth” of The Plot Against America is a character in Roth’s dystopian alternate history, the “Philip Roth” of The Facts and Patrimony is more closely aligned with Roth the author, adding new levels to his blurring of fact and fiction.

David Kepesh, the protagonist of The Breast (1972), The Professor of Desire (1977), and The Dying Animal (2001), is one such protagonist. This chapter will discuss “The Kepesh novels” as a whole, addressing the benefits and drawbacks of considering these novels as a neatly combined unit, and examining their place within Roth’s body of work as a whole, commenting on what they reveal evolution of his ideas about literature, psychoanalysis, masculinity, and aging.

The last four novels Roth composed prior to his retirement—which include Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, and Nemesis have also been lately grouped together as “Nemeses.” The novels—more accurately deemed novellas, in sharp contrast to hefty tomes likes those collected as “The American Trilogy”—are not grouped together by a common protagonist, but rather by their notable brevity and by common theme: all four deal closely with the subject of mortality.This chapter offers an expanded discussion for the rationale of grouping these novels together (and, as with the other categorizations, the pitfalls of doing so), and will provide an overview of their critical reception and commentary on how they draw upon and depart from Roth’s earlier body of work.

This chapter explores the relationship between improvisational performance and periodical journalism by way of the international reception of celebrity improvvisatore Tommaso Sgricci’s performances in Paris and London in 1824 and 1826. Accounts of Sgricci’s improvised tragedies proliferated in French, German, and English newspapers and literary magazines; when transcripts of his improvisations appeared in book form, they generated further reviews over the next several years. This constellation of live performances and written texts, along with the process of remediation that occurs between them, provokes reflections on the reciprocal relationship between a spontaneous and evanescent form of theatre and the differently time-bound genres of print culture. The international reception of Sgricci’s performances reveals transnational networks between late-Romantic periodicals as well as cultural differences that appear when journalists adapt their reviews to different local readerships.