Public Intellectuals and the Schoolteacher Audience: The First Ten Years of the Critical Quarterly

The Critical Quarterly, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2009, was originally intended to attract an audience beyond university departments of English. One particular aim of its editors was to bridge the gap between schools and universities, appealing to teachers of English at secondary level and offering its readers the chance to keep up to date with developments in their subject. As time went on, however, the journal became more specialized, and today its appeal is largely to what Stefan Collini has described as the ‘academic public sphere’. This essay explores the first ten years of the Critical Quarterly as a specific example of the relationship between public intellectuals and their wider audience, and concludes by highlighting the need for a continued engagement between schools and universities.