Criticism and the Nineteenth Century [Hardcover]

The re-emergence into critical esteem of the literature of the English mid-nineteenth century has been one of the post-war excitements for students and general readers. Mid-nineteenth century literature is not simply the best body of literature the English have produced. It happens also to be literature that has a practical interest for ourselves. We live so plainly in its wake. The problems being faced a hundred years ago are the problems still facing ourselves, such as the continued supremacy of science and its methods and the consequently progressive disappearance of what was called the supernatural. Nineteenth-century literature, however, is interesting for other reasons than extended topicality, offering infinite aesthetic riches, as Geoffrey Tillotson discusses in this volume of essays.

Geoffrey Tillotson holds the Chair of English Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London.

I(a). The Critic and His Material: The Return to the Nineteenth Century
I(b). The Critic and His Material: On Critical Method
II. Matthew Arnold: The Critic and the Advocate
III. Matthew Arnold and Eighteenth-Century Poetry
IV. Arnold and Pater: Critics Historical, Aesthetic and Unlabelled
V. Pater, Mr. Rose and the Conclusion' of The Renaissance
VI. Newman's Essay on Poetry: An Exposition and Comment
VII. English Poetry in the Nineteenth Century
VIII. Homage to Tennyson, 1940
IX. Wilkie Collin's No Name
X. Henry James and his Limitations
Abbreviations
Index