Literary Criticism Books

PREFACE. T primary object of this book is to furnish our children with material for becoming acquainted with the development of American life and history as found in Southern writers and their works. It may serve as a reader supplementary to American history and literature, or it may be made the ground-work for serious study of Southern life and letters; and between these extremes there are varying... more...

I do not think that such a fact would now move the fancy of the liveliest newspaper man, so much has the West since returned upon the East in a refluent wave of authorship. But then the West was almost an unknown quality in our literary problem; and in fact there was scarcely any literature outside of New England. Even this was of New England origin, for it was almost wholly the work of New England men... more...

CHAPTER I. The Subject Defined To attempt at the outset a rigid definition of the word romanticism would be to anticipate the substance of this volume. To furnish an answer to the question—What is, or was, romanticism? or, at least, What is, or was English romanticism?—is one of my main purposes herein, and the reader will be invited to examine a good many literary documents, and to do a certain... more...

MY DEAR ECCLES, You will, I know, permit me to address you these essays which are more the product of your erudition than of my enthusiasm. With the motives of their appearance you are familiar. We have wondered together that a society so avid of experience and enlargement as is ours, should ignore the chief expression of its closest neighbour, its highest rival and its coheir in Europe: should ignore,... more...

These studies are collected from the monthly press. One appeared in the New Quarterly, one in Macmillan’s, and the rest in the Cornhill Magazine. To the Cornhill I owe a double debt of thanks; first, that I was received there in the very best society, and under the eye of the very best of editors; and second, that the proprietors have allowed me to republish so considerable an amount of copy. These... more...

LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES—First Visit to New EnglandBIBLIOGRAPHICAL Long before I began the papers which make up this volume, I had meant to write of literary history in New England as I had known it in the lives of its great exemplars during the twenty-five years I lived near them. In fact, I had meant to do this from the time I came among them; but I let the days in which I almost... more...

INTRODUCTION. The death of John Dryden, on the first of May, 1700, closed a period of no small significance in the history of English literature. His faults were many, both as a man and as a poet, but he belongs to the race of the giants, and the impress of greatness is stamped upon his works. No student of Dryden can fail to mark the force and sweep of an intellect impatient of restraint. His... more...

ESSAYS INTRODUCTORY THE SO-CALLED HOMERIC HYMNS “The existing collection of the Hymns is of unknown editorship, unknown date, and unknown purpose,” says Baumeister.  Why any man should have collected the little preludes of five or six lines in length, and of purely conventional character, while he did not copy out the longer poems to which they probably served as preludes, is a mystery.  The... more...

ON THE VICE OF NOVEL READING. Ever since the Novel reached the stage of development where it was demonstrated to be the most ingenious vehicle yet designed for conveying the protean thought and fancy of man, there has stood in the judgment book of Public Opinion the decree that novel-reading was a vice. Of course, that judgment did not apply exclusively to the reading of novels. It was a sort of... more...

TRAGEDIES Vol. IV (392) Most of the notes which the present editor has subjoined to this play were published by him in a small pamphlet in 1745. I.i (393,*) Enter three Witches] In order to make a true estimate of the abilities and merit of a writer, it it always necessary to examine the genius of his age, and the opinions of his contemporaries. A poet who should now make the whole action of his... more...