The professor and the profession

Robert Bechtold Heilman is one of the last survivors of a generation of American critics that included such literary giants as Cleanth Brooks. Allen Tate, and Edmund Wilson, men to whom literary criticism was not a profession or an academic necessity but a calling. In a distinguished career that has spanned nearly six decades. Heilman has influenced generations of scholars and critics through his exquisitely written commentaries on subjects ranging from William Shakespeare to Thomas Hardy. In The Professor and the Profession, Heilman looks back over his life and times from his perspective as both an academic and an American. The Professor and the Profession will appeal to a broad array of scholars, from young academics wanting to know where they came from to those of Heilman's generation who can appreciate this personal reminiscence into the world of letters.