Literary critic Hamilton dies at 63

Ian Hamilton, who has died at the age of 63, may have been relatively little known to the general reading public but he was nonetheless the literary arbiter of a generation.

His own publications included a fine biography of Robert Lowell and an unsuccessful attempt to track down JD Salinger, eventually published as In Search Of JD Salinger.

He published only one volume of poems, The Visit, in 1970, containing 50 very short lyrics. When the volume was re-issued, he commented drily: "Fifty poems in 25 years: not much to show for half of a lifetime, you might think." But he revised the poems by cutting them down further, taking out three lines here, six there .

Hamilton was the most laconic of critics too. His reviews avoided all flourishes and irrelevance and went directly to the subject. This was his literary ethic: to pare away everything that was less than necessary, to leave only the essential in its brevity and force.

It made him the most revered and influential editor of as small a literary magazine that there has been in this country in the last 50 years. He began his poetry magazine, the Review, in Oxford in 1962. It lasted 12 years.

Then in 1974, with the help of a substantial Arts Council grant, he launched The New Review, which ran for four years and 50 issues before folding. Much mocked at the time, it now looks like a great achievement.

Many fine writers, including Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan, first found their voice here. It combined criticism and creation in a way few magazines ever manage. The Arts Council literature department has never found such a good way of spending its money since. The little magazine died with The New Review.

Hamilton himself led the literary life to the full. He drank, he smoked, he was financially feckless and his love life was complicated. But his concentration on literary judgment was absolute.

A festschrift, Another Round At The Pillars, published for his 60th birthday, contained many warm recollections of hours spent with him in pubs and restaurants, by writers hanging on to his least word.

His sardonicism and stringency were a great counterbalance to the puffing that now dominates the book world, with all its prizes and promotions. For years, Ian Hamilton was the editor and critic whom young writers hoped to please. No one now possesses such charisma.