Great Writers series

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The Great Writers series was a collection of literary biographies published in London from 1887, by Walter Scott & Co. The founding editor was Eric Sutherland Robertson, followed by Frank T. Marzials. [1] [2] [3]

The stated intention, articulated by Robertson, was that the series should constitute fact-based textbooks of English literature. [4] He advocated analytical and scholarly methods of literary study. [5] The works generally contained a bibliography, compiled by John Parker Anderson of the British Museum. [6]

A comparable French series also began publication in 1887, edited by Jean Jules Jusserand, under the title Les Grands Écrivains Français. Its inspiration was John Morley's English Men of Letters , published from 1880. [7] Oscar Wilde called the Great Writers series "unfortunate", but suggested that Anderson's bibliographies were of value, and should be collected up. [8] His dislike of the restrictions on authors extended also to the English Men of Letters. [9] Other series in imitation of English Men of Letters were English Worthies (Longman) and Literary Lives (Hodder). [10]

YearSubjectAuthorComment
1887 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Eric Sutherland Robertson [11]
1887 Samuel Taylor Coleridge Hall Caine [12] [13] "a sound and, within its scope, comprehensive volume" [14]
1887 Charles Dickens Frank T. Marzials [15]
1887 Dante Gabriel Rossetti Joseph Knight [16]
1887 Samuel Johnson Francis Richard Charles Grant [17]
1887 Charles Darwin George Thomas Bettany [18]
1887 Charlotte Brontë Augustine Birrell [19]
1887 Thomas Carlyle Richard Garnett [20]
1887 Tobias George Smollett David Hannay [21] [22]
1887 Adam Smith Richard Haldane [23]
1887 John Keats William Michael Rossetti [24]
1887 Percy Bysshe Shelley William Sharp [25]
1888 Oliver Goldsmith Austin Dobson [26]
1888 Walter Scott Charles Duke Yonge [27]
1888 Robert Burns John Stuart Blackie [28]
1888 Victor Hugo Frank T. Marzials [29]
1888 Ralph Waldo Emerson Richard Garnett [30]
1888 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe James Sime [31]
1888 William Congreve Edmund Gosse [32]
1888 John Bunyan Edmund Venables [33]
1888 George Crabbe Thomas Edward Kebbel [34] "Cheap, short and unsympathetic" [35]
1888 Heinrich Heine William Sharp [35]
1889 John Stuart Mill W. L. Courtney [36] "although not negligible, is of very minor importance" [37]
1889 Friedrich Schiller Henry Woodd Nevinson [38]
1889 Frederick Marryat David Hannay [39]
1889 Honoré de Balzac Frederick Wedmore [40] [41]
1889 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing T. W. Rolleston [42]
1890 John Milton Richard Garnett
1890 George Eliot Oscar Browning [43] Largely criticism
1890 Jane Austen (1890) Goldwyn Smith [44] "signifies the recognition of Austen as a standard classic author" [45]
1890 Robert Browning William Sharp [46]
1890 Lord Byron Roden Noel [47] [48]
1890 Nathaniel Hawthorne Moncure Conway [49]
1890 Arthur Schopenhauer William Wallace [50]
1890 Richard Brinsley Sheridan Lloyd C. Sanders [51]
1890 Henry Thoreau Henry Shakespear Stephens Salt [52] revised edition 1896 [52]
1891 William Makepeace Thackeray Herman Charles Merivale and Frank Marzials [53]
1891 Miguel de Cervantes Henry Edward Watts [54]
1892 Voltaire Francis Espinasse [55]
1893 James Leigh Hunt Cosmo Monkhouse [56] "most careful, but not entirely sympathetic" [57]
1893 John Greenleaf Whittier William James Linton [58]
1895 Ernest Renan Francis Espinasse [59]

Two further lives from the same publisher, of John Ruskin (1910) by Ashmore Wingate, [60] and of Maurice Maeterlinck (1913) by Jethro Bithell, [61] do not conform to the pattern of the series.

Notes

  1. ↑ Anonymous (1979). Writers' and artists' year-book. Рипол Классик. p. 59. ISBN   978-5-87872-776-1.
  2. ↑ George Alexander Kennedy; A. Walton Litz (10 August 2000). The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 7, Modernism and the New Criticism. Cambridge University Press. p. 381. ISBN   978-0-521-30012-4.
  3. ↑ Roger W. Peattie (1 November 2010). Selected Letters of William Michael Rossetti. Penn State Press. p. 466 note 6. ISBN   978-0-271-04424-8.
  4. ↑ Gary Day (4 July 2008). Literary Criticism: A New History: A New History. Edinburgh University Press. p. 288. ISBN   978-0-7486-2852-0.
  5. ↑ C. Atherton (27 September 2005). Defining Literary Criticism: Scholarship, Authority and the Possession of Literary Knowledge, 1880-2002. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 81. ISBN   978-0-230-50107-2.
  6. ↑ s:The Times/1925/Obituary/Death of J. P. Anderson
  7. ↑ Warren Staebler (8 December 2015). Liberal Mind of John Morley. Princeton University Press. p. 183. ISBN   978-1-4008-7808-6.
  8. ↑ Oscar Wilde (24 September 2008). Reviews: Easyread Large Bold Edition. ReadHowYouWant.com. p. 203. ISBN   978-1-4270-6889-7.
  9. ↑ Joanne Shattock (28 January 2010). The Cambridge Companion to English Literature, 1830–1914. Cambridge University Press. p. 17. ISBN   978-0-521-88288-0.
  10. ↑ Bernard Lightman, The Many Lives of Charles Darwin: Early Biographies and the Definitive Evolutionist, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London Vol. 64, No. 4 (20 December 2010), pp. 339–358. Published by: Royal Society. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25802124
  11. ↑ A Literary History of America. Ardent Media. pp. 551–. GGKEY:NN3CZKX1NKB.
  12. ↑ Vivien Allen (1 July 1997). Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer. A&C Black. p. 433. ISBN   978-1-85075-809-9.
  13. ↑ English Prose of the Nineteenth Century. Ardent Media. p. 11. GGKEY:HR1Y0574SCA.
  14. ↑ Richard Foulkes (28 June 1997). Church and Stage in Victorian England. Cambridge University Press. p. 205. ISBN   978-0-521-45320-2.
  15. ↑ Laurence W. Mazzeno (2008). The Dickens Industry: Critical Perspectives 1836–2005. Camden House. p. 36. ISBN   978-1-57113-317-5.
  16. ↑ Dante Gabriel Rossetti (28 August 2014). Delphi Complete Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. p. 556. GGKEY:PZB5TACXH2Z.
  17. ↑ s:The New International Encyclopædia/Johnson, Samuel (lexicographer)
  18. ↑ Bernard V. Lightman; Bennett Zon (29 May 2014). Evolution and Victorian Culture. Cambridge University Press. p. 298. ISBN   978-1-107-02842-5.
  19. ↑ Harold Bloom (2009). The Brontës. Infobase Publishing. p. 88. ISBN   978-0-7910-9620-8.
  20. ↑ Mark Cumming (January 2004). The Carlyle Encyclopedia. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 28. ISBN   978-0-8386-3792-0.
  21. ↑ Hannay, David (1887). Life of Tobias George Smollett. W. Scott.
  22. ↑ Damian Grant (1977). Tobias Smollett: A Study in Style. Manchester University Press. p. 224. ISBN   978-0-7190-0607-4.
  23. ↑ The Cambridge History of English Literature Volume X the Age of Johnson. CUP Archive. 1967. p. 512. GGKEY:JJWKSNQUFTU.
  24. ↑ Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1963). The Rossetti-Macmillan Letters: Some 133 Unpublished Letters Written to Alexander Macmillan, F.S. Ellis, and Others. University of California Press. p. 156. GGKEY:9SA1HGJBSQ5.
  25. ↑ Madeleine Callaghan (27 December 2012). The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley. OUP Oxford. p. 657 note 4. ISBN   978-0-19-165513-5.
  26. ↑ E. Mikhail (15 December 1993). Goldsmith: Interviews and Recollections. Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 214. ISBN   978-1-349-23093-8.
  27. ↑ Charles Duke Yonge (1888). Life of sir Walter Scott. Walter Scott & Co.
  28. ↑ Stuart Wallace (25 May 2006). John Stuart Blackie: Scottish Scholar and Patriot: Scottish Scholar and Patriot. Edinburgh University Press. p. 328. ISBN   978-0-7486-2819-3.
  29. ↑ "Frank T. Marzials (Marzials, Frank T. (Frank Thomas), Sir, 1840-1912), The Online Books Page" . Retrieved 19 January 2017.
  30. ↑ R. W. Emerson. Poems and Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Рипол Классик. p. iv. ISBN   978-5-87574-979-7.
  31. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Sime, James"  . Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 52. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  32. ↑ Adolphus William Ward (1 January 1997). A History of English Dramatic Literature. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. p. 467 note 1. ISBN   978-81-7156-687-7.
  33. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1899). "Venables, Edmund"  . Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 58. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  34. ↑ Rosamond E M Harding (12 October 2012). Anatomy of Inspiration. Routledge. p. 134. ISBN   978-1-136-26348-4.
  35. 1 2 Heinrich Heine (1 January 2009). Heine's Poems. Cosimo, Inc. p. lxxiv. ISBN   978-1-60520-507-6.
  36. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1894). "Mill, John Stuart"  . Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 37. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  37. ↑ Lionel Robbins Baron Robbins (1973). The Evolution of Modern Economic theory. Transaction Publishers. p. 97. ISBN   978-0-202-36964-8.
  38. ↑ Rosamond E M Harding (12 October 2012). Anatomy of Inspiration. Routledge. p. 143. ISBN   978-1-136-26355-2.
  39. ↑ Eugene L. Rasor (2004). English/British Naval History to 1815: A Guide to the Literature. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 528. ISBN   978-0-313-30547-4.
  40. ↑ s:Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings/Preface
  41. ↑ The Academy and Literature. Proprietor. 1905. p. 119.
  42. ↑ Toshimasa Yasukata (31 January 2002). Lessing's Philosophy of Religion and the German Enlightenment. Oxford University Press. p. 194. ISBN   978-0-19-803310-3.
  43. ↑ The Early Life of George Eliot. Manchester University Press. 1976. p. xvii. GGKEY:N6CWQ431ZPS.
  44. ↑ Jane Austen (17 November 2013). Delphi Complete Works of Jane Austen (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. p. 2799. ISBN   978-1-908909-27-5.
  45. ↑ Mr B C Southam; B.C. Southam (12 November 2012). Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage Volume 2 1870-1940. Routledge. p. 59. ISBN   978-1-134-78158-4.
  46. ↑ Philip Waller (2008). Writers, Readers, and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870-1918. Oxford University Press. p. 207. ISBN   978-0-19-954120-1.
  47. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1895). "Noel, Roden Berkeley Wriothesley"  . Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 41. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  48. ↑ Hinings, Jessica. "Noel, Roden Berkeley Wriothesley". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/20235.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  49. ↑ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hawthorne, Nathaniel"  . Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  50. ↑ Richard Falckenberg (1977). History of Modern Philosophy From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time. Library of Alexandria. p. 611. ISBN   978-1-4655-8121-1.
  51. ↑ George Henry Nettleton (1 January 1975). English Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, 1642-1780. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 340. GGKEY:Z4RBQS1Z0TK.
  52. 1 2 Henry David Thoreau (1960). H. D. Thoreau, a Writer's Journal. Courier Corporation. p. xxxi. ISBN   978-0-486-20678-3.
  53. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Merivale, Herman Charles"  . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  54. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Watts, Henry Edward"  . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  55. ↑ John Rylands Library page [ permanent dead link ]
  56. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Monkhouse, William Cosmo"  . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 2. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  57. ↑ Leigh Hunt (1913). Leigh Hunt. Ardent Media. p. 5. GGKEY:28QZXU0B086.
  58. ↑ Lee, Sidney, ed. (1901). "Linton, William James"  . Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). Vol. 3. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  59. ↑ Life of Ernest Renan (1895 edition), Open Library. OL   13519931M.
  60. ↑ English Prose of the Nineteenth Century. Ardent Media. 1929. p. 499. GGKEY:HR1Y0574SCA.
  61. ↑ Bithell, Jethro (1913). "Life and Writings of Maurice Maeterlinck". Internet Archive . London: Walter Scott & Co. Retrieved 20 January 2017.

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