...wrote on the American literary situation, asking his now infamous question in the Edinburgh Review. "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" (Ruland 1972: 157). The agonized response of American writers, publishers, and men of letters to Smith's...

...popularity and reputation are perhaps fairly easy to define. To Sydney Smith's notorious question of 182.0, 'in the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book,' Sedgwick provided an answer. Her novels were noteworthy for their use of American materials - settings,...

...air of the New World had induced a deterioration). In 1820, the English essayist Sydney Smith asked: "In the four quarters of the globe who reads an American...play? or looks at an American picture or statue?" This delightful member of the clergy was, in fact, well disposed toward Americans, except for their...

...looking for confirmation that American artists and writers could refute the famous taunt of Sydney Smith: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American...play? or looks at an American picture or statue?" Dunlap would later feature Cole in his History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the...

...was to haunt a substantial number of influential Americans for the remainder of the i 9th century: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American...play? or looks at an American picture or statue?" 3 Who, Smith was demanding, paid any attention to American culture at all? The question was quickly...

...followed by decades of American cultural dependence on Great Britain. Sydney Smith's famous taunt in 1820, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an 423 American play? or looks at an American picture . . . ?" evoked small response, for in truth even...

...Review, Sydney Smith, in an oft-quoted attack on American literary culture, rhetorically demanded: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" (157). The triumphalist American literary nationalist response to Smith's query was that a number of...

...produced from the whole annals of this self-adulating race. In the four quarters of the globe, who read an American book? or goes to an American play? or...their chemists discovered? or what old ones have they analyzed? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? — what have...

...what Irving did to put America on the international literary map. Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American...play, or looks at an American picture or statue?" — Washington Irving In 1820, the British writer Sydney Smith taunted Americans with this vicious...

...literature, we mean. It is all imported." In January 1820, in the same journal, Smith continued in this vein: "In the four quarters of the globe. Who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play?" I quote Smith from Jay B. Hubbell's relentlessly — and, I hope, consciously — hilarious book, Who...