''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly
literary review published in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
by
News UK
News Corp UK & Ireland Limited (trading as News UK, formerly News International and NI Group) is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher of ...
, a subsidiary of
News Corp
The second and current incarnation of News Corporation, doing business as News Corp, is an American mass media and publishing company headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The company was formed on ...
.
History
The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...
'' but became a separate publication in 1914. Many distinguished writers have contributed, including
T. S. Eliot,
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
and
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device.
Vir ...
. Reviews were normally anonymous until 1974, when signed reviews were gradually introduced during the editorship of
John Gross. This aroused great controversy. "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
Sir Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was an English novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter and critic. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and '' London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Mem ...
was a member of the editorial staff early in his career.
Philip Larkin's poem "
Aubade
An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, intended for performance in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn. It has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or ...
", his final poetic work, was first published in the
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a Religion, religious and Culture, cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by coun ...
-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: it missed
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
entirely, and commented only negatively on
Lucian Freud from 1945 until 1978, when a portrait of his appeared on the cover.
Its editorial offices are based in
The News Building, London.
It is edited by
Martin Ivens, who succeeded
Stig Abell
Stephen "Stig" Paul Abell (born 10 April 1980) is an English journalist, newspaper editor and radio presenter. He currently co-presents the Monday to Thursday breakfast show on Times Radio with Kate McCann.
Abell was from 2016 to 2020 edi ...
in June 2020.
The ''TLS'' has included essays, reviews and poems by
D. M. Thomas,
John Ashbery
John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic.
Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...
,
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino (, ; ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian novelist and short story writer. His best-known works include the ''Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the '' Cosm ...
,
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith (born Mary Patricia Plangman; January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character T ...
,
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera ( ; ; 1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. Kundera went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship ...
,
Philip Larkin,
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025) was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists a ...
,
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (; ; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist. Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union, Brodsky ran afoul of Soviet authorities and was expelled ("strongly ...
,
Gore Vidal
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal ( ; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his acerbic epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the Social norm, social and sexual ...
,
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born 7 June 1952; ) is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, he has sold over 13 million books in 63 languages, making him ...
,
Geoffrey Hill
Sir Geoffrey William Hill, Royal_Society_of_Literature#Fellowship, FRSL (18 June 1932 – 30 June 2016) was an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston Uni ...
and
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Justin Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish Irish poetry, poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his best-known works is ''Death of a Naturalist'' (1966), his first m ...
, among others.
Many writers have described the publication as indispensable.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025) was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists a ...
, novelist and the 2010 winner of the
Nobel Prize in Literature
The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...
, described the ''TLS'' as "the most serious, authoritative, witty, diverse and stimulating cultural publication in all the five languages I speak".
Editors
* 1902:
James Thursfield
* 1902:
Bruce Richmond
* 1938:
D. L. Murray (David Leslie Murray)
* 1945:
Stanley Morison
* 1948:
Alan Payan Pryce-Jones
* 1959:
Arthur Crook
* 1974:
John Gross
* 1981:
Jeremy Treglown
* 1991:
Ferdinand Mount
* 2003:
Peter Stothard
* 2016:
Stig Abell
Stephen "Stig" Paul Abell (born 10 April 1980) is an English journalist, newspaper editor and radio presenter. He currently co-presents the Monday to Thursday breakfast show on Times Radio with Kate McCann.
Abell was from 2016 to 2020 edi ...
* 2020:
Martin Ivens
See also
* ''
The New York Review of Books
''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of ...
''
* ''
London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published bimonthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review of Book ...
''
*
List of literary magazines
Below is a list of literary magazines and journals: periodicals devoted to book reviews, creative nonfiction, essays, poems, short fiction, and similar literary endeavors.
*Because the majority are from the United States, the country of origin ...
References
Further reading
* May, Derwent (2001).
Critical Times: The History of the Times Literary Supplement'. HarperCollins. .
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Times Literary Supplement
1902 establishments in the United Kingdom
Book review magazines
Literary magazines published in the United Kingdom
Magazines established in 1902
Magazines published in London
Newspaper supplements
News UK
Weekly magazines published in the United Kingdom
The Times