The Victorian Age in Literature

Bibliographical Note

After having surveyed the immense field presented in such a volume as

Mr. George Mair's _Modern English Literature_ in this series, or, more

fully, in the _Cambridge History of Modern Literature_, the later volume

of Chambers' _English Literature_, Mr. Gosse's _History of Modern

English Literature_, or Henry Morley's _English Literature in the Reign

of Victoria_, the wise reader will choose some portion for closer study,

and will go straight to the originals before he has any further traffic

with critics or commentators, however able.

He will then need the aid of fuller biographies. Some Victorian _Lives_

are already classic, or nearly so, among them Sir G. Trevelyan's

_Macaulay_, Forster's _Dickens_, Mrs. Gaskell's _Charlotte Bront*,

Froude's _Carlyle_, and Sir E. T. Cook's _Ruskin_. With these may be

ranged the great _Dictionary of National Biography_. The "English Men of

Letters" Series includes H. D. Traill's _Coleridge_, Ainger's _Lamb_,

Trollope's _Thackeray_, Leslie Stephen's _George Eliot_, Herbert Paul's

_Matthew Arnold_, Sir A. Lyall's _Tennyson_, G. K. Chesterton's _Robert

Browning_, and A. C. Benson's _Fitzgerald_. At least two autobiographies

must be named, those of Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill, and, as

antidote to Newman's _Apologia_, the gay self-revelations of Borrow, and

Jefferies' _Story of My Heart_. Other considerable volumes are W. J.

Cross's _George Eliot_, Lionel Johnson's _Art of Thomas Hardy_, Mr. W. M.

Rossetti's _Dante G. Rossetti_, Colvin's _R. L. Stevenson_, J. W.

Mackail's _William Morris_, Holman Hunt's _Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood_,

Sir Leslie Stephen's _The Utilitarians_, Buxton Forman's _Our Living

Poets_, Edward Thomas's _Swinburne_, Monypenny's _Disraeli_, Dawson's

_Victorian Novelists_, and Stedman's _Victorian Poets_. The "Everyman"

_Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature_ is useful for

dates.

The latter half of the second volume of Mr. F. A. Mumby's _Letters of

Literary Men_ is devoted to the Victorian Age. There are fuller

collections of the _Letters_ of Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, Dickens, the

Brownings, Fitzgerald, Charles Kingsley, Matthew Arnold, and more

recently the _Letters of George Meredith_, edited by his son.

Among the important critical writers of the period, Matthew Arnold

(_Essays in Criticism_, _Study of Celtic Literature_, etc.) stands

easily first. Others are John, now Lord, Morley (_Studies in

Literature_, etc.), Augustine Birrell (_Obiter Dicta_, _Essays_), W. E.

Henley (_Views and Reviews_), J. Addington Symonds (_Essays_), J.

Churton Collins, Richard Garnett, Stopford A. Brooke, George E. B.

Saintsbury (_History of Criticism_), R. H. Hutton (_Contemporary

Thought_), J. M. Robertson (_Modern Humanists_, _Buckle_, etc.), Frederic

Harrison (_The Choice of Books_, etc.), Andrew Lang, Walter Bagehot,

Edmund Gosse, Prof. Dowden, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir A. T. Quiller

Couch.