What is "middlebrow"

1911 (adj.), 1912 (n.), from middle + brow (compare highbrow, lowbrow).\n\n[T]here is an alarmingly wide chasm, I might almost say a vacuum, between the high-brow, who considers reading either as a trade or as a form of intellectual wrestling, and the low-brow, who is merely seeking for gross thrills. It is to be hoped that culture will soon be democratized through some less conventional system of education, giving rise to a new type that might be called the middle-brow, who will consider books as a source of intellectual enjoyment.

["The Nation," Jan, 25, 1912]

a. (context pejorative English) Neither highbrow or lowbrow, but somewhere in between. n. A person or thing that is neither a highbrow or lowbrow, but in between.

n. someone who is neither a highbrow nor a lowbrow

The term middlebrow describes both a certain type of easily accessible art, often literature, as well as (more negatively) the population that uses art to acquire culture and class that is usually unattainable. First used by the British satire magazine Punch in 1925, middlebrow is derived as the intermediary between highbrow and lowbrow, terms derived from phrenology. Middlebrow has famously gained notoriety from derisive attacks by Dwight Macdonald, Virginia Woolf, and (to a certain extent) Russell Lynes – attacks that served the cause of modernist marginalization of the popular in favor of " high art". The middlebrow in this light is classed as a forced and ineffective attempt at cultural and intellectual achievement, as well as characterizing literature that emphasizes emotional and sentimental connections rather than literary quality and innovation; though postmodernism has been more prepared to see the advantages of a middlebrow position aware of high culture but able to balance its claims with those of the everyday world.