Selected Works: The Modern Movement and The Two Natures, by Cyril Connolly, edited by Matthew Connolly

A self-lacerating wit returns from his unquiet grave

Cyril Connolly will be remembered somewhere for something, but not by many for much. It is a pity, for these selections are compelling, only seldom dated, and often thrillingly on-the-money – even if the presentation is questionable. Sadly, there is no space for anything from the critic's sole novel The Rock Pool (1936), though The Two Natures does feature shorter fiction, like "Told in Gath", a delicious satire on mad, mid-period Aldous Huxley.

The Modern Movement accommodates his literary judgements, starting with Enemies of Promise (1938). Considered by Auden "the best English book of criticism since the war", this rightly appears in full. But the autobiographical last section, "A Georgian Boyhood", is held over for The Two Natures, dedicated to more personal writings. This sabotage conceals the provocative connection Connolly was making between his critical sense and his cossetted, then cloistered upbringing.

Otherwise, the full text of The Unquiet Grave (1944) dominates volume two. It is relentlessly pessimistic, and often self-loathing, as Connolly waxes nostalgic about "abroad" – invariably France. In the darkest times of war, the prognosis for his Europhile internationalism must have looked bleak.

Elsewhere, Connolly writes with a rich humour. Enemies of Promise displays a comic deftness equal to Waugh's. Take this description of the confused sense of identity experienced by this upper-middle-class boy of Anglo-Irish origins: "England = Grannie, Lodgings, School, Poverty, Middle-Class. Ireland = Aunt Mab, Castles, Holidays, Riches, Upper Class. Ireland, therefore, became desirable and England sordid."

Connolly's humour is mordant, self-lacerating – and occasionally brave. At 34, he not only reported the disastrous story of his passion – as a departing Etonian of 18 – for Nigel, a pious 15-year-old; he also reproduced Nigel's poignant character assassination in reply to his advances: "Dear Connolly, I feel very honoured that you [then in pencil] consider me worthy of ink. You see, I don't think you are..."

Enemies contains sharp vignettes of Orwell, Beaton, the Sitwells, Anthony Powell and the bon viveur Brian Howard. It is customary to dismiss Connolly for squandering his talents. Connolly, though, was harsher than anyone about his frequent indulgences in the "white man's grave of journalism": reviewing books, rather than writing them. Enemies, meanwhile, holds up well. Connolly single-handedly argued for Ronald Firbank's technical skill, judging him Eliot's equal.

Elsewhere, his spoof Fleming – "Bond Strikes Camp" – strikes home, the character Goldprick anticipating Austin Powers' Goldmember by 40 years. If most of his writing proves ephemeral, what of it? It may be a reader's vanity, not a writer's, to suggest that much of what pleases us will last.

Connolly's ideas about literature might largely have been superseded: his high-minded pursuit of the universally appealing in literature does not, perhaps, resonate today. However, Connolly was right to insist that size, scale or breadth could never be proper measures of a writer's worth. To find out what were – and are – do investigate further.