Autor/-in: Christopher Ricks

One of the best-known living literary critics. The W. H. Auden quotation (see Full Description) is from a review of Ricks's Longman edition of Tennyson. He writes: 'Reading Professor Ricks's comments and observations convinces me that he is exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding. No poet wants either uncritical admirers or decoders who discover in his poems secret symbols and meanings which never entered his mind. But every poet thinks of himself as a craftsman, a maker of verbal objects: what he hopes for is that critics will notice the technical means by which he secures his effects. Alas, so few critics do. Professor Ricks is a happy exception.'