It may be of little consolation to Morrissey in the wake of the brutal reviews he has received for his debut novel List of the Lost to remind him that his literary hero Oscar Wilde was also not above criticism. In 1882 the American writer Ambrose Bierce greeted an appearance in San Francisco by the Irish literary giant with a truly savage attack on the man and his work.

"The ineffable dunce has nothing to say and says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire," Bierce wrote. "There never was an impostor so hateful, a blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and offensively daft."

Bierce is not the only writer who has made a name for himself by savaging the work of others. Wilde himself, after all, was not above condemning others with a well-turned witticism.

And it is fair to say that for readers there is a pleasure in the well-crafted bad review. Or at least an opportunity for laughter. Writing about the 1948 film Isn't It Romantic? the veteran film reviewer Leonard Maltin once offered a simple one-word response: "No."

If they're lucky, of course, those who are being criticised may have the last laugh. What is a damning critique set against commercial success, after all? In 1977 the New York Magazine reviewer John Simon described a newly released film as "a set of giant baubles manipulated by an infant mind." That film was Star Wars.