"No society in modern history, surely, has accorded art criticism a larger public role than Victorian Britain. The Literate Eye illuminates the consequences of this distinctive presence through a series of dazzling readings in literature, popular science, period debates, and other forms. Teukolsky's is an absolutely brilliant book, a must-read for students of nineteenth-century culture and its legacies."-Douglas Mao, Johns Hopkins University "Rachel Teukolsky's innovative study reveals the richness and complexity of Victorian art writing. In an important move, The Literate Eye brings exhibitionary practices within the purview of aesthetic theory, alongside a spectrum of critical and literary texts. In Teukolsky's historical-rather than teleological-account, formalism emerges as a strand within Victorian thinking, rather than its avenging other. This book should be read by all historians of nineteenth-century art-especially those who idly accept modernism's view of Victorian aesthetic culture at face value."-Tim Barringer, Yale University "Impressive in scope, ambition, and skill, The Literate Eye is an important addition to the field.

Teukolsky has read a remarkable quantity of material and she analyzes art discourse with sensitivity and panache."--Talia Schaffer, Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York "The Literate Eye is a book students of nineteenth and twentieth century art and culture have needed for a long time: a lucid, detailed, and compelling account of the development of formalism out of the rich ferment of thinking and writing about art that characterized the nineteenth century. The claims and methods of this book will not only spark further work, they will provoke salutary debate for years to come."--Jonah Siegel, Rutgers University "Interesting and valuable.The author keeps close to facts and evidence, faithfully maps her local studies onto a larger picture, and supplies abundant leads for further exploration.This is among the best comprehensive treatments of Victorian art criticism I've read." --NBOL-19.org "This is a splendidly stimulating book for anyone interested in the relations between the visual and the verbal in the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

[Teukolsky's] book is stimulating, thoughtful and intelligent and she has brought to the fore a large new body of material for revaluing changes in sensibility that took place in the late nineteenth century." --Review of English Studies.