First published in 1957, Literary Criticism: A Short History traces our aesthetic heritage from its classical origins up to the contemporary state of criticism in the English-speaking world.

Divided into four volumes, each book adopts a fair and objective position in the presentation of various critical positions, and each critical theory is considered not only in competition with other critical theories, but also in vital dialectic with the creative literature of its own time.

Volume Two focuses on Neo-Classical criticism and covers Medieval themes, the Sixteenth Century, English Neo-Classicism, late seventeenth-century themes, rhetoric and Neo-Classic wit, poetry as pictures, genius, emotion, and association, and Samuel Johnson.