SOURCE: Review of Reviewing the Forties, in New Republic, Vol. 179, No. 18, October 28, 1978, pp. 35-36.

In the following review, Atlas finds in Trilling's collection of her 1940s book reviews intimations of her later essayist's voice, but overall questions the purpose of publishing the collection.

History is now and in New York City, to echo Eliot. The 1930s and 1940s, decades no longer consigned to the generation that lived through them, have become the property of memoirists and intellectual historians. The Collected Works of Lionel Trilling, the autobiographies of Alfred Kazin and Jerre Mangione, Philip Rahv's Essays on Literature and Politics: given this enthusiastic climate of revival, it is only natural that Diana Trilling should rush into print the book reviews she contributed to The Nation from 1942 to 1949.

Still, others have done so before her, and with no other justification than vanity or the public's mild interest in such documents...