The Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement (or TLS, on the front page from 1969) is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp.

History

The TLS first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to The Times, but became a separate publication in 1914. Many distinguished writers have been contributors, including T. S. Eliot, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, but reviews were normally anonymous until 1974. From 1974, signed reviews were gradually introduced during the editorship of John Gross.

This aroused great controversy at the time. “Anonymity had once been appropriate when it was a general rule at other publications, but it had ceased to be so,” Gross said. “In addition I personally felt that reviewers ought to take responsibility for their opinions.”

Martin Amis was a member of the editorial staff early in his career. Philip Larkin's poem Aubade, effectively his final poetic work, was first published in the Christmas-week issue of the TLS in 1977. While it has long been regarded as one of the world's pre-eminent critical publications, its history is not without gaffes. For instance, the publication missed James Joyce entirely and commented only negatively on Lucian Freud from 1945 until 1978, when a portrait of his appeared on the cover.^[1]

The TLS cooperates closely with The Times; its online version is hosted on the Times website, and its editorial offices are based in Times House, Pennington Street, London. The current editor is Peter Stothard, a former editor of The Times itself. He succeeded Ferdinand Mount in 2003.

In recent decades, the TLS has included essays, reviews and poems by John Ashbery, Italo Calvino, Patricia Highsmith, Milan Kundera, Philip Larkin, Mario Vargas Llosa, Joseph Brodsky, Gore Vidal, Orhan Pamuk, Geoffrey Hill, and Seamus Heaney, among others.^[2]

Many writers have described the publication as indispensable. For example, prize-winning Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa said: “I have been reading the TLS since I learned English 40 years ago. It is the most serious, authoritative, witty, diverse and stimulating cultural publication in all the five languages I speak.”

The TLS in literature

The Times Literary Supplement has appeared in works of fiction. One of the most backhanded of such mentions appears in the English translation of Samuel Beckett's novel Molloy (1953), in which Molloy relates that:

... in winter, under my greatcoat, I wrapped myself in swathes of newspaper, and did not shed them until the earth awoke, for good, in April. The Times Literary Supplement was admirably adapted to this purpose, of a neverfailing toughness and impermeability. Even farts made no impression on it.

Another example is in George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying, in which the central character Gordon Comstock's collection of poetry was reviewed by the "Times Lit. Supp.".

Editors

• James Thursfield 1902
• Bruce Richmond 1902
• D. L. Murray (David Leslie Murray) 1938
• Stanley Morison 1945
• Alan Pryce-Jones 1948
• Arthur Crook 1959
• John Gross 1974
• Jeremy Treglown 1981
• Ferdinand Mount 1991
• Peter Stothard 2003

See also

• Tinpahar
• Book review of Malte Herwig book in regard to Peter Handke
• The New York Review of Books
• London Review of Books
• List of literary magazines

References

Further reading

• Derwent May Critical Times: The History of the "Times Literary Supplement", 2001, Harper Collins, ISBN 0-00-711449-4 - The official history

External links

• The Times Literary Supplement website