At MLA 2020 in Seattle, I joined a roundtable event, organized by Eleni Coundouriotis and Lauren M. E. Goodlad on behalf of the Forum on Literary History, to celebrate Marshall Brown’s thirty years as editor of MLQ: A Journal of Literary History. The remarks that follow expand my ten-minute presentation while retaining some trace of the original occasion, which was public and honorific (as befits the MLA) but also intimate and affectionate (as used to be possible prior to the pandemic when people could meet together in person).
With such an editor in sight, right at the table as he was, celebratory remarks must be analytic, historical, and crisply written. All of us who have worked with Marshall as advisers, as authors, and as collaborating editors know that his dedication to the discipline of prose invigorates the journal’s offerings. This body of “us” is not small. In his illuminating...
