College and Research Libraries


setting and goes on to discuss the changes 
in the philosophy governing development 
and use of the collection under its early li­
brarians, Joseph Quincy Adams and Louis 
B. Wright. He reminds us that "special­
ized research libraries exert a shaping in­
fluence on scholarly research through pol­
icies that decide not only what is worth 
collecting but also what constitutes a com­
plete and coherent body of materials." In 
the end, however, although "Libraries 
can lock their doors1 or . . . restrict access 
to their resources . . . libraries as orga­
nized collections of books and other arti­
facts cannot directly control what their cli­
ents will produce." 

While Bristol examines the philosophi­
cal background and cultural context of pri­
vate collecting in the nineteenth century, 
James Gibson provides a detailed and 
readable account of one Shakespeare col­
lector, Horace Howard Furness. The son 
of a prominent Abolitionist Unitarian min­
ister, and himself a student of law, Fur­
ness carne from a genteel and cultured, 
though not scholarly, background. He 
was thus typical of many "gentleman 
scholars'' of the period, though what be­
gan for him as a kind of hobby grew into a 
lifelong obsession that would have been 
the death of many university men. His ini­
tial dabbling with the Bard at meetings of 
the Shakespeare Society of Philadelphia 
(all males, mainly of the legal persuasion) 
led to his first venture at editing a Shake­
spearian text (Romeo an1 Juliet, 1871) and 
eventually to his establishment of the first 
fifteen volumes of the monumental vario­
rum Shakespeare. 

In a period in which Henry Clay Folger 
was just beginning his collection, no 
American library had the resources to sup­
port such a scholarly undertaking as the 
variorum. Furness accordingly set out to 
form his own collection. His first attempt, 
a bid to purchase ''the Shakespearian por­
tion of the library of Thomas Pennant Bar­
ton,'' failed when a decision was reached 
not to split the collection but to sell the 
whole to the Boston Public Library. Fur­
ness received help in his endeavor, how­
ever, from the British Shakespeare scholar 
and bibliographer, J. 0. Halliwell-Phil­
lipps, who not only provided Furness 

Recent Publications 571 

with materials from his own collection, 
but also recommended the London book­
dealer, Alfred Russell Smith. Through 
Smith, Furness purchased many of his 
treasures, including the First, Third, and 
Fourth Folios from the Corser Library sale 
in 1871; he also obtained the 1611 Hamlet 
and three Pavier Quartos, "which had be­
longed to the Shakespearian editor 
Edward Capell." By the mid-1870s he had 
over 2,000 volumes, and "his collection of 
German and French editions of Shake­
speare . . . {was] judged to be the most 
complete in the United States." 

Along with the history of these 
nineteenth-century Shakespearian collec­
tions and of the social relationships 
among scholars and bibliophiles in this 
period, librarians will find much to profit 
from in Bristol's description of the chang­
ing cultural climate that has given rise to 
the various movements in Shakespeare 
criticism down to our day.-Georgianna 
Ziegler, University of Pennsylvania, Philadel­
phia, ·Pennsylvania. 

Kimball, Roger. Tenured Radicals: How 
Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Educa­
tion. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. 
204p. $18.95 (ISBN 0-06-016190). LC 89­
45049. 
American educational institutions have 

come under much scrutiny in recent 
years, often in the form of trenchant criti­
cism of aims and objectives, as well as of 
methods. While much attention has been 
focused on elementary and secondary ed­
ucation, higher education has certainly 
not been spared. Allan Bloom's The ·Clos­
ing of the American Mind set the tone for an 
ongoing controversy, of which academic 
librarians need to be aware. 

Roger Kimball, managing editor of The 
New Criterion, attempts here to ride this re­
cent wave of criticism. Kimball is espe­
cially critical of ''recent developments in 
the academic study of the humanities," 
especially deconstruction, feminist stud­
ies, and other movements to undermine 
the traditional canon of liberal studies. He 
regales us with illustrations of the obscu­
rity or just plain silliness of many of the 
latest modes of criticism, especially liter­
ary criticism, but his indictment goes 



572 College & Research Libraries November 1990 

deeper. These recent fancies are, in his 
words, "ideologically motivated assaults 
on the intellectual and moral substance of 
our culture." 

Kimball's thesis is that the student 
rebels of the 1960s have taken over our 
system of higher education (or at least 
"our best colleges and universities"), 
and they are now subverting it from 
within, as professors. Attacks on the 
canon, deconstruction, semiology, and 
poststructuralism are all parts of a politi­
cal assault on the humanities in toto. Even 
the recent Supreme Court decision forc­
ing the University of Pennsylvania to 
open its employment files to federal 
courts in tenure cases is part of the move­
ment. The reader can see where Mr. Kim­
ball stands on the political spectrum 
when he considers even the Supreme 
Court ''tenured radicals.'' 

Much of the book consists of what Kim­
ball calls "reports from the front," or ac­
counts of symposia or conferences where 
the radicals whom Kimball considers the 
stars of contemporary academia have met 
to discuss the current "crisis" in the hu­
manities. He dwells especially on the de­
constructionists and their deliberate ob­
scurity, although it is difficult to see how 
the irrelevant vagaries he describes carry 
any consistent political message. 

Kimball's fundamental disagreement 
with the varied assortment of educators 
he criticizes is about the very nature of the 
humanities. He consistently urges that the 
humanities curriculum must include "the 
best that has been thought and read.'' The 
tenured radicals, he says, are opposed to 
this notion. But he misses their point that 
the issue is really, "What is the best? Who 
decides?" For Kimball it is the traditional 
canon of Western civilization, which he 
admits I' can be seen to be exclusive or elit­
ist. But in another sense, it is deeply dem­
ocratic for it locates authority not in any 
class or race or sex, but in a tradition be­
fore which all are equal." He seems to 
think this canon dropped from the heav­
ens, or sprang fully clothed from some 
universal mind. 

The recent revelations about Paul de 
Man's wartime journalism provide Kim­
ball with irrefutable proof that deconstruc­

tion is perverted doctrine. De Man is criti­
cized as anti-Semitic for having written 
that Western literature would not suffer if 
we removed the contributions of its Jew­
ish writers. Yet, how many Jewish writers 
would we find in Kimball's traditional 
canon? Precious few, once we move be­
yond the Bible. So the young de Man and 
Kimball are essentially in agreement about 
"the best that has been thought and 
read.'' It does not include Jews, or blacks, 
or Asians, or many women of any race. 

While Kimball makes some valid criti­
cism of the current trends in critical the­
ory, these points would be better made 
elsewhere. The book often strays too far 
from its main thesis, giving the impres­
sion that the thesis itself was an after­
thought, inserted to set the book apart 
from others of its genre. The thesis is no­
where proven and amounts to nothing 
more than an oversimplification of a com­
plex problem. The recent elimination of 
the Western Civilization requirement at 
Stanford is offered as proof of the politici­
zation of the curriculum. Yet, we are soon 
told that this requirement had been estab­
lished only in 1980. Hallowed tradition! 
Kimball gets closer to the real problems 
when he quotes Hannah Arendt on the 
crisis of authority in modern education, 
and he himself makes the observation that 
she was writing in 1958! 

The problems of higher education, then, 
have deeper and more complex roots than 
Kimball would have us believe. And the 
origins and nature of the humanities cur­
riculum are not so apolitical. For a better 
treatment of this topic, see Anthony Graf­
ton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the 
Humanities. Kimball exaggerates when he 
portrays current intellectual fads as dan­
gerous political dogma, and their provoca­
tive adherents as the 'I establishment'' of 
American higher education. While the 
Western civilization canon is being ques­
tioned, it is still taught almost every­
where. Does anyone read Milton other 
than on a college campus? Kimball writes 
well (unlike his academic targets), and is 
very entertaining, but his book will not 
stand as a major contribution to the cur­
rent debate.-William S. Monroe, New York 
University Libraries.