The 13 Worst Reviews of Classic Books

A quarter century ago, Pushcart editor Bill Henderson put together Rotten Reviews Redux, a collection of the meanest and most scathing reviews of classic books and the writers who penned them. The vitriol returns in a 2012 edition of the book with a new introduction from Henderson.

"Whitman is as unacquainted with art as a hog is with mathematics." -The London Critic, 1855, on Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

"Here all the faults of Jane Eyre (by Charlotte Brontë) are magnified a thousand fold, and the only consolation which we have in reflecting upon it is that it will never be generally read." -James Lorimer, North British Review, 1847, on Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

"Monsieur Flaubert is not a writer." -Le Figaro, 1857, on Madame Bovaryby Gustave Flaubert








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