Macmillan anthologies of English literature / Vol. 4, The Nineteenth century (1798 - 1900) / ed. by Brian Martin

xvi GENERAL INTRODUCTION of birth, texts -with the exception of the Middle English sectionare largely modernised and footnotes are kept to a minimum. A broadly representative policy has been the aim of the general editors, who have maintained a similar format and proportion in each volume, though the medieval volume has required more annotation. ANJ MJA xx INTRODUCTION English society, he sought refuge abroad, and finally, ill from a chill caught after riding his horse through dank marshlands, he died far from home, bled to death by his doctors. This was the man who had swum the Hellespont to prove it was possible, and who swam for a wager, in trousers, from the island of the Lido up the Grand Canal of Venice to the spot where the lagoon opens to Fusina. His long, unfinished epic satire in ottava rima, 'Don Juan', survives as his most popular poem.At first glance, Shelley seems to have little in common with his friend, Byron. Yet both were aristocratic, both opposed to the social and literary establishments in England, both made the continent their home, and both looked to Greece as the land of liberty. They wrote quickly and gave little time to correction of their work. Byron was a wordly man, a materialist: Shelley, by contrast, an idealist, whose vigorous poem 'Ode to the West Wind' best illustrates the point. Shelley contributed, in his time, spiritual freedom and audacity to English literature, and the conviction that the intellect was subordinate to the imagination. He was possessed by a vision of neo-Platonic intellectual beauty, demonstrated in his 'To A Skylark':INTRODUCTION XXI imagination and that of his readers in tales of medieval romance. Jane Austen explored that level of society in which she was brought up, and exposed its manners and foibles. The familiar essay, as practised by Hazlitt and Lamb, became popular; and many famous literary reviews were founded, the Edinburgh Review in 1802, the Quarterly Review in 1809, and Blackwood's Magazine in 1817. Criticism, and Shakespearean criticism in particular, found voice in Coleridge, Lamb and Hazlitt. Coleridge was one of the century's most influential critics. His originality revealed itself in the huge, uneven range of Biographia Liter aria, and was the means of disseminating ideas from the continent, especially from Germany. Many of his ideas on Shakespeare, as the American critic Norman Fruman has shown, were the result of plagiarising the views of A. W. Schlegel.A change in style and tone of thought, reflected in literature, began to take place in the 1830s. In 1830 Tennyson published his Poems; in 1832 the Reform Bill was passed in Parliament. Queen Victoria succeeded to the throne in 1837. Romantic tales, imaginative fantasies, still gripped readers' minds, but increasingly as an escape from the ordinary, and rather philistine preoccupations of urban, industrial and commercial life. Tennyson composed long narrative poems based on the Arthurian legend: the Pre-Raphaelites looked back to the Middle Ages for sources of inspiration and diversion. Their paintings, too, reflected this interest; and D. G. Rossetti painted pictures to illustrate some of Tennyson's poems, for example, 'Sir Galahad' in the Moxon edition of his Poems (1857). Architects modelled designs on medieval Gothic buildings, a fashion which drew to a close with William Butterfield's extravagantly decorated, polychromatic Keble College, Oxford, the high point of that style.The nation's chief concern was with the creation of wealth, and to that end, the extension and consolidation of empire after the accession of Queen Victoria. Literature, itself a product of society, became occupied with industrial, materialist themes. It was forced to assert its ideals in the face of a hostile world of money and economic theory. The latter had its exponents in the Utilitarians and political economists: J. S. Mill and Jeremy Bentham are representative. Conversely, writers such as Carlyle, Kingsley, Tennyson (in poems such as 'Maud' and 'Locksley Hall') and Dickens (in Hard Times) showed the world of economic materialism, the nation's grovelling to Mammon, for what it really was. Pursuit of material gain more often than not stifled the interests of the soul, aesthetic sensibility, and faculties of artistic xxii INTRODUCTION creation and appreciation. The accumulation of wealth could become all-consuming. It was necessary, in such an age, for polemicists to emphasise the virtues of art and literature: Ruskin was an agitator in this cause. Those who made great wealth had to be persuaded that art and literature needed time and attention, and, equally, finance and patronage. The vigorous ferment in Victorian society produced other significant thinkers, spiritual masters such as Cardinal Newman, and aestheticians such as Walter Pater.Of all Victorian writers, Tennyson and Browning were foremost among the poets, and Dickens and George Eliot among the novelists. Tennyson was Poet Laureate from 1850 until his death in 1892. His Poems (1842), of which many were revisions of those in his 1832 volume, firmly established his reputation. He retreated from the intellectual romanticism of Wordsworth or Shelley which preceded him, and paid greater attention to craftsmanship and technique. In Morte D'Arthur his verse reflects exactly the difficulty of Sir Bedivere's progress through rugged terrain:Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels -And on a sudden, lo! the level lake, And the long glories of the winter moon.The long monosyllables and the labials of the last two lines reinforce the relief of reaching the shoreline of the lake. He was the master of narrative, descriptive verse, which was wanting only in profound or witty thought: Carlyle remarked of the 'Idylls of the King' that they were the 'inward perfection of vacancy' but that 'the lollipops were so superlative'.At the same time, Tennyson showed himself a child of the Industrial Revolution who did not quite understand its technicalities. In 'Locksley Hall' he used a train image: 'Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of time.' Subsequently he confessed, 'When I went by the first train from Liverpool to Manchester [1830], I thought the wheels ran in grooves'. Some of his poems are remarkable for their declaration of Victorian values hardly acceptable now. In 'Locksley Hall' the narrator's arrogance, and extreme self-confidence, are expressed in his view of 'terribly destructive accident' on the South-Eastern Railway, he climbed back into his carriage which had nearly fallen into a viaduct and rescued 'Mr and Mrs Boffin (in their manuscript dress of receiving Mr and Mrs Lammle at breakfast)'. George Eliot is an example of the strong tradition of women novelists in the nineteenth century which includes Jane Austen, the Brontes and Elizabeth Gaskell. Her novels are distinguished for Front Matter....Pages i-xxvi William Blake....Pages 1-22 William Cobbett....Pages 23-26 Maria Edgeworth....Pages 27-28 James Hogg....Pages 29-33 William Wordsworth....Pages 34-65 Sir Walter Scott....Pages 66-79 Samuel Taylor Coleridge....Pages 80-109 Robert Southey....Pages 110-112 Jane Austen....Pages 113-127 Charles Lamb....Pages 128-133 Walter Savage Landor....Pages 134-135 William Hazlitt....Pages 136-153 Leigh Hunt....Pages 154-156 Thomas De Quincey....Pages 157-165 Thomas Love Peacock....Pages 166-169 George Gordon (Lord) Byron....Pages 170-196 Percy Bysshe Shelley....Pages 197-220 John Clare....Pages 221-223 John Keats....Pages 224-245 Thomas Carlyle....Pages 246-257 Mary Shelley....Pages 258-260 Thomas Hood....Pages 261-263 Thomas Babington Macaulay....Pages 264-269 William Barnes....Pages 270-275 John Henry Newman....Pages 276-285 Benjamin Disraeli....Pages 286-292 Elizabeth Barrett Browning....Pages 293-295 John Stuart Mill....Pages 296-299 Edward Fitzgerald....Pages 300-303 Alfred, Lord Tennyson....Pages 304-326 Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell....Pages 327-336 William Makepeace Thackeray....Pages 337-344 Charles John Huffman Dickens....Pages 345-374 Robert Browning....Pages 375-396 Edward Lear....Pages 397-398 Anthony Trollope....Pages 399-418 Charlotte Brontë....Pages 419-423 Emily Brontë....Pages 424-429 Arthur Hugh Clough....Pages 430-433 Charles Kingsley....Pages 434-439 George Eliot (Mary Ann, later Marian, Evans)....Pages 440-472 John Ruskin....Pages 473-481 Matthew Arnold....Pages 482-499 Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore....Pages 500-502 William Wilkie Collins....Pages 503-517 Walter Bagehot....Pages 518-521 George Meredith....Pages 522-525 Dante Gabriel Rossetti....Pages 526-529 Christina Rossetti....Pages 530-534 Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)....Pages 535-539 William Morris....Pages 540-543 James Thomson....Pages 544-547 Samuel Butler....Pages 548-556 William Schwenck Gilbert....Pages 557-560 Algernon Charles Swinburne....Pages 561-566 Walter Horatio Pater....Pages 567-569 Thomas Hardy....Pages 570-592 Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy....Pages 593-595 Gerard Manley Hopkins....Pages 596-612 Robert Bridges....Pages 613-614 William Ernest Henley....Pages 615-616 Robert Louis Stevenson....Pages 617-621 Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde....Pages 622-629 Back Matter....Pages 630-640 The nineteenth century volume demonstrates the variety of English literature in an age of social, intellectual, religious and scientific ferment. The shift to Romanticism is portrayed with extracts from major figures such as Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge and the contribution of women writers is fully recognised, with selections from Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Elizabeth Gaskell. The anthology concludes with selections of Victorian poetry and extracts from Wilde and Stevenson and altogether offers a comprehensive sample of the vast treasure-house of nineteenth century literature. The 19th century volume demonstrates the variety of English literature in an age of social, intellectual, religious and scientific ferment. The shift to Romanticism is portrayed with extracts from major figures such as Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge and the contribution of women writers is fully recognised, with selections from Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and Elizabeth Gaskell. The anthology concludes with selections of Victorian poetry and extracts from Wilde and Stevenson and altogether offers a comprehensive sample of the vast treasure-house of 19th century literature. Edited By Brian Martin. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. 638-640.