Get The BookBrowse Anthology, our 880 page collection of our past decade of Best of Year reviews, now available in hardcover!

Who said: "The low brow and the high brow"

BookBrowse's Favorite Quotes

"The lowbrow often believes that a bad book is good,
while the highbrow often believes that a good book is bad."

-- Robert Lynd


Robert LyndRobert Lynd (1879-1949) was born in Belfast, Ireland. He worked briefly for the Northern Whig newspaper before moving to Manchester, and then to London as a freelance journalist. He became a staff writer for the Daily News (later the News Chronicle) and from 1912 to 1947 was its literary editor. He also wrote for the Nation, and under the pseudonym Y.Y., he contributed weekly essays to the New Statesman for more than three decades.

Politically, he was a socialist and a supporter of Sinn Fein (an Irish separatist party formed in 1905; Sinn Fein means 'ourselves') and the Gaelic League (a cultural organization founded in 1893 with the objective of reviving the Irish language and reintroducing it into schools). He also edited some of the works of James Connolly (who was charged with treason, and shot by the British, for his involvement in the Irish rebellion of 1916).

He is best remembered today for his essays written over a period of more than forty years.

More Quotes

This quote & biography originally ran in an issue of BookBrowse's membership magazine. Full Membership Features & Benefits.

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris
    by Evie Woods
    From the million-copy bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

Who Said...

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don'...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J of A T, M of N

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.