Matthew Arnold

This 1882 collection contains "The Incompjatibles," about the Irish Land Bill, and "An Unregarded Irish Grievance," as well as the prefaces to a number of Arnold's poems. Also included are other essays on social and literary topics, such as "Copyright" and-The Future of Liberalism."

Assembled in the wake of the death of "Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh"-struck by a stray bullet during the Franco-Prussian War-here is a collection of the fictional Prussian's letters, conversations, and opinions. A descendant of the von Thunder-ten-Tronckh family of Voltaire's Candide, Arminius proffers many views on social and pedagogic issues through these exchanges with his pen pal, Matthew Arnold, who writes back with equal vigor.

Published in 1870, this volume contains the essays "St. Paul and Protestantism," "Puritanism and the Church of England," "Modern Dissent," and "A Comment on Christmas." "Hardly, perhaps," wrote Arnold, "can there be at present attempted a more beneficial service to religion, than the true criticism of this great and misunderstood author."

Posthumously published in 1888, Matthew Arnold's previously collected essays on poetry and poets proved, if ever there was a doubt, Arnold's immense critical gift. His focused, honest style eludes the follies of bias. Included here are the essays, "The Study of Poetry," "Milton," "Thomas Gray," "John Keats," "Wordsworth," "Byron," and "Shelley," among others.

Each essay in this 1880 edition of Mixed Essays is on a different subject yet all exhibit "unity of tendency," in Arnold's words. It contains the works "Democracy," "Equality," "Irish Catholicism and British Liberalism," "'Porro unum est Necessarium,'" "A Guide to English Literature," "Falkland," "A French Critic on Milton," "A French Critic on Goethe," and "George Sand."

Published in 1885, this collection of Arnold's public addresses given during his 1883-84 American tour consists of "Numbers: or the Majority and the Remnant," "Literature and Science," and "Emerson," in which he judges Emerson as a mediocre poet and philosopher but nevertheless places him among the "most distinctly and honourably American of your writers."

In this 1861 collection of the lectures he delivered at Oxford the previous year, Arnold finds fault with contemporary translations of Homer by Pope, Chapman, Newman, and others, setting forth his own criteria for successful translation, among which is the adoption of hexameter verse, as well as respect for Homer's cardinal virtues and his "grand style."

Victorian poet and critic Matthew Arnold wrote the essays that constitute Culture and Anarchy between 1867 and 1869, a time of rapid social change and uncertainty. Defining culture as "the best that has been thought and said," Arnold offers concrete suggestions for its role as a corrective to the chaos of materialism, industrialism, and self-interest. Acclaimed by Commentary as "the classic defense of high culture against the depredations of modernity,"...