Public-domain ebook
Language: en2,932 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Literature - Other·Essays, Letters & Speeches
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #36298.
The work is a sweeping survey of English literary history, presented as a series of sketches that trace the evolution of authors, language, and ideas from the mythic origins of Britain to the early modern period. It opens with a philosophical meditation on how writers both shape and reflect their age, turning fleeting opinion into lasting cultural memory. From there the author launches into a detailed contents list that promises essays on everything from the druidic institutions of ancient Britain and the Anglo‑Saxon heroic tradition to the rise of printing, the psychological portrait of Sir Thomas More, and the intellectual currents that produced Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The introductory passage frames the book as a “psychology of genius,” seeking to reveal the inner habits and idiosyncrasies of literary figures that conventional biographies overlook.
Written in a dense, nineteenth‑century prose style, the text reflects Isaac Disraeli’s erudite, sometimes polemical voice, rich with classical allusion and a penchant for grand, rhetorical flourishes. Readers who relish exhaustive cultural criticism, enjoy tracing the tangled lineage of language and myth, and have patience for long, essay‑like chapters will find it rewarding. It appeals especially to scholars of literary history, students of Victorian scholarship, and anyone fascinated by the way national identity and intellectual life intertwine in the story of English letters.
The opening · free to read
Authors are the creators or the creatures of opinion; the great form an epoch, the many reflect their age. With them the transient becomes permanent, the suppressed lies open, and they are the truest representatives of their nation for those very passions with which they are themselves infected. The pen of the ready-writer transmits to us the public and the domestic story, and thus books become the intellectual history of a people. As authors are scattered through all the ranks of society, among the governors and the governed, and the objects of their pursuits are usually carried on by their own peculiar idiosyncrasy, we are deeply interested in the secret connexion of the incidents of their lives with their intellectual habits. In the development of that predisposition which is ever working in characters of native force, all their felicities and their failures, and the fortunes which such men have shaped for themselves, and often for the world, we discover what is not found in biographical dictionaries, the history of the mind of the individual--and this constitutes the psychology of genius.
In the midst of my studies I was arrested by the loss of sight; the papers in this collection are a portion of my projected history.
The title prefixed to this work has been adopted to connect it with its brothers, the "Curiosities of Literature," and "Miscellanies of Literature;" but though the form and manner bear a family resemblance, the subject has more unity of design.
The author of the present work is denied the satisfaction of reading a single line of it, yet he flatters himself that he shall not trespass on the indulgence he claims for any slight inadvertences. It has been confided to ONE whose eyes unceasingly pursue the volume for him who can no more read, and whose eager hand traces the thought ere it vanish in the thinking; but it is only a father who can conceive the affectionate patience of filial devotion.
CONTENTS.
The book keeps going
Reading is free forever. Sign up and watch scenes appear while you read.
Scenes Storieta drew for other classics.
New illustrated classics
Once or twice a month: the latest books to get full character casts, scene art, and free comic editions. No account needed.
