Case-histories of the commercial and institutional contexts of writing about writing, with emphasis on the relationship between journalism and literary scholarship. Topics discussed include the traffic between universities and the literary world and Virginia Woolf's work as a literary journalist.

From Jenny Uglow's chapter on the journalistic world of Henry Fielding to Marjorie Perloff's praise for the impact of the Internet on poetry reviewing, Grub Street and the Ivory Tower gives lively case-histories of the commercial and institutional contexts of writing about writing, especially the vexed relationship between journalism and academe.