highbrowism

Updated: May 4, 2025

And yet every American writer must feel a little proud that there was one of our race who could make the great refusal of popularity, sever, with those intricate pen strokes of his, the bonds of interest that might have held the "general reader," and write just as well as he knew how. Whether his novels and short stories gained by this heroic "highbrowism," is another question.

Henry Seidel Canby - Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism