...independence they have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for the arts, for literature. ... In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American...play? or looks at an American picture or statue?" Sydney Smith's question "Who reads an American book?" has outlived all of his own clever volumes. Even...

...travelers complained of "American materialism" and "vile cupidity." The Edinburgh Review asked in 1820, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American...play? or looks at an American picture or statue?" 9 Mrs. Frances Trollope wrote of America in 1832: "The immense exhalation of periodical trash, which...

...charges as those leveled by the Reverend Sydney Smith in the Edinburgh Review in 1820 when he asked, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American...play? or looks at an American picture or statue?" And they agreed with Henry James's litany of American deficiencies: "no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor...

...Smith's notorious rhetorical question in the 1820 Edinburgh Review, familiar to him from childhood: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" Carrying republican progressiveness into literature as well as into life was the stuff of many a nationalistic...

...passage brings them in their own language our sense, our science and genius in bales and hogsheads. ... In the four quarters of the globe who reads an American book?" Stephens, aware of all this, nonetheless in the winter of 1836 made a contract with Harper and Brothers...

...an American culture. In Adams' day, we were struggling. English critic Sydney Smith wrote in 1815, “In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?” I have the answer for him 180 years later: the whole world reads American books. And our National Endowment...

...1990s. 1819 TEXTS 1820 1821 pressing a general belief in the paucity of American literature, asks, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" The American Colonization Society founds Liberia in order to provide a home for emancipated slaves...

...author, made his infamous attack on American culture in the Edinburgh Review. "In the four corners of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes...American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?"44 Clearly, for many observers of the American scene before and after Tocqueville, New York...

...popularity and reputation are perhaps fairly easy to define. To Sydney Smith's notorious question of 182.0, 'in the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book,' Sedgwick provided an answer. Her novels were noteworthy for their use of American materials - settings,...

...wrote on the American literary situation, asking his now infamous question in the Edinburgh Review. "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" (Ruland 1972: 157). The agonized response of American writers, publishers, and men of letters to Smith's...