Abstract
Book reviews serve multiple functions. They are not only used to assess the merit of individual books but also contribute to the creation and maintenance of scholarly communities. This paper draws on nineteenth-century book reviews to outline three of their features that contributed to the selfdefinition of such communities: the assessment of books, the assessment of authors, and the use of positive and negative politeness strategies to address individual authors as well as a broader audience. The analysis will be based on the book reviews of the German Semitist Theodor Nöldeke and the experimental psychologist Wilhelm Wundt in the Literarisches Centralblatt in the eighteenseventies. In their book reviews they both criticized and praised their peers, which turned review journals like the Centralblatt in arenas for polemic debate as well as meeting places for likeminded scholars. To be more precise, book reviews were used to communicate standards of scholarly excellence, expectations of the character and skills of scholars, and the acknowledgement of the value of the continued existence of aims and interests shared among a large group of academically educated and employed scholars. By contributing to the establishment and maintenance of scholarly peer groups with shared values, book reviews also reinforced the dividing line between academic researchers and lay contributors to their fields.
Highlights
You worthy reviewers place yourselves on [...] a pedestal and speak too much like chief justices about poor clients who stand trial before you. [...] You have too much of an eye for the defects and do not place enough value on the good. [...] That makes a writer or publisher resentful, you see.1. In his bitter reflection on what he saw as typical approaches to book reviewing in late-nineteenth-century Germany, the Dutch Semitist Michael Jan de Goeje painted a picture of a vicious practice that encouraged reviewers to be needlessly critical of praiseworthy scholarship
Books supporting other philosophies that Wundt considered to be speculative, received their fair share of criticism as well: he sharply criticized books that built on Fichtean and Schopenhauerian idealism, Hegelian dialectics, phrenology, and the belief in the veracity of wondrous observations of spiritists.42. These first observations on the elements that Nöldeke and Wundt selected for praise and critical scrutiny, provide the first outlines of how book reviews contributed to the creation and maintenance of communities of scholarship
I have argued that academic book reviews in the latenineteenth century were about more than just the merits of newly published scholarly works
Summary
You worthy reviewers place yourselves on [...] a pedestal and speak too much like chief justices about poor clients who stand trial before you. [...] You have too much of an eye for the defects and do not place enough value on the good. [...] That makes a writer or publisher resentful, you see.. [...] That makes a writer or publisher resentful, you see.1 In his bitter reflection on what he saw as typical approaches to book reviewing in late-nineteenth-century Germany, the Dutch Semitist Michael Jan de Goeje painted a picture of a vicious practice that encouraged reviewers to be needlessly critical of praiseworthy scholarship. The recipient of his complaint, his German friend and colleague Theodor Nöldeke, was not impressed. In his eyes, the fierce criticism in the book review that had encouraged De Goeje to reflect so disappointedly on the reviewing practice as a whole had been welldeserved. I will draw particular attention to the way in which book reviews are instrumental in shaping and maintaining scientific communities
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