From a cache of cuttings about Harold Bloom, mainly on his book ‘The Western Canon’ (1994) fell a handwritten letter, unsigned and unsent. For some reason Max Richards (1937-2016) starts the letter, then leaves it alone. Maybe it’s a draft for something else. The letter eloquently reveals the sorts of shifts happening in Melbourne literary studies, Melbourne by then just typical of more widespread changes in attitude and practice. 1/7/95 Saturday Dear Brian, I was at a loss for words on Bloom, wasn’t I? What I might finally have got around to saying is that I doubt Bloom missed much in the ‘theory boom’. His earlier criticism tended to be thesis-ridden – I remember John Butt saying as much to me in Edinburgh in 1964, and Norman Holmes Pearson when he visited La Trobe in 1968 or so. But they were old literary historians