Part of Series
Matthew Arnold (1822-88), the leading man-of-letters of the Victorian age, has been the decisive influence on modern thinking about literature and criticism and his work has become an inescapable cultural reference point today. In this stylish and entertaining book Stefan Collini examines the whole range of Arnold's literary, social, and religious criticism as well as his poetry, placing them in the context of the major intellectual controversies of the nineteenth century. By attending to the distinctive power of Arnold's writing to charm, tease, persuade, and irritate, the book provides a brilliant characterization of the tone and temper of his mind. This edition includes a substantial Afterword which reflects on Arnold's continuing polemical significance and his role in contemporary cultural debate.
Author
Stefan Collini is Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University. After degrees at Cambridge and Yale, he taught at the University of Sussex before moving to a post in the Faculty of English at Cambridge in 1986. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a frequent contributor to The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Nation, and other periodicals, and an occasional broadcaster. His research includes the relation between literature and intellectual history from the early 20th century to the present. Current research focusses on the cultural role of, and the historical assumptions expressed in, literary criticism in Britain from c.1920 to c.1970. Recent work has dealt with the question of intellectuals in 20th-century Britain, the relation between academic critics and 'men of letters', the role of cultural criticism, as well as individual essays on figures such as T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, George Orwell, Raymond Williams, and Richard Hoggart. Also work on the history, and public debates about the role, of universities in Britain.
