But perhaps it is unfair to fault a book of such wide scope for its omissions. Kramnick's study of the critical environment that shaped our notions of canonicity will be welcomed not only by those concerned with the eighteenth-century canon, but also by those interested in our own canon wars. His concern is not only the development of the canon of great works and the types of reading appropriate to it, but indeed literature itself and the idea of intellectual labour of any sort. Chronologically, Siskin picks up where Kramnick leaves off. A few references to Astell, Pope, and Thomson do not change the fact that The Work of Writing is really about the 'long' Romantic era in Britain, from the 1770s through the 1820s.
Nothing is taken for granted.
His investigations range widely over philosophical prose, the georgic, the lyric, the periodical, and the novel. His readings of specific passages sometimes seem perfunctory, and he often latches onto the tiniest detail and spins from it a dozen pages of interpretation. He therefore often builds large structures on textual foundations not big enough to support them. But the structures themselves are impressive, obviously buttressed by considerable erudition and many years of thought. Siskin's knowledge of the literature of the period is remarkable not only in its breadth but in its depth, and he wears this learning lightly.