Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1955. dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - Collects five essays based on papers presented at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association in December 1952. These essays offer a preliminary history of the art of literary criticism as developed in the United States. The authors include Harry H. Clark, Richard H. Fogle, Robert P. Falk, John H. Raleigh and C. Hugh Holman. An association copy INSCRIBED on the front endpaper by Holman to Marshall W. Brown "with the admiration, gratitude and affection of Hugh Holman." Brown was the President of Presbyterian College in South Carolina, where Holman graduated from and where he began his career. In addition to his work in literary criticism, Holman wrote six detective novels in the 1930s and 1940s, two which were set on the Presbyterian College campus. Includes a selected reading list, index. ix, 262 pp.