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English Men Of Letters
''English Men of Letters'' was a series of literary biographies written by leading literary figures of the day and published by Macmillan, under the general editorship of John Morley. The original series was launched in 1878, with Leslie Stephen's biography of Samuel Johnson, and ran until 1892. A second series, again under the general editorship of Morley, was published between 1902 and 1919. First series :1. Leslie Stephen, ''Samuel Johnson'', 1878 :2. James Cotter Morison, ''Gibbon'', 1878 :3. Richard H. Hutton, ''Sir Walter Scott'', 1878 :4. John Addington Symonds, '' Shelley'', 1878 :5. Thomas Henry Huxley, '' Hume'', 1879 :6. William Black, ''Goldsmith'', 1878 :7. William Minto, ''Daniel Defoe'', 1879 :8. John Campbell Shairp, ''Robert Burns'', 1879 :9. R. W. Church, '' Spenser'', 1879 :10. Anthony Trollope, '' Thackeray'', 1879 :11. John Morley, ''Burke'', 1879 :12. Mark Pattison, '' Milton'', 1879 :13. Henry James, ''Nathaniel Hawthorne'', 1879 :14. Edward Do ...
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Biography In Literature
When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography or biographical approaches to the past as a tool for interpreting literature: literary biography and biographical criticism. Conversely, two genres of fiction rely heavily on the incorporation of biographical elements into their content: biographical fiction and autobiographical fiction. Literary biography A literary biography is the biographical exploration of individuals' lives merging historical facts with the conventions of narrative. Biographies about artists and writers are sometimes some of the most complicated forms of biography. Not only does the author of the biography have to write about the subject of the biography but also must incorporate discussion of the subject-author's literary works into the biography itself.Karl, Frederick R. "Joseph Conrad" in Meyers (ed.) ''The Craf ...
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John Campbell Shairp
John Campbell Shairp (30 July 1819 – 18 September 1885) was a Scottish critic and man of letters. Life He was born at Houstoun House, Linlithgowshire, the third son of Major Norman Shairp of Houstoun, and was educated at Edinburgh Academy and the University of Glasgow. Shairp gained a Snell exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford in 1840. In 1842 he won the Newdigate prize for a poem on Charles XII of Sweden, and took his degree in 1844. During these years the "Oxford Movement" was at its height. Shairp was stirred by John Henry Newman's sermons, and admired the poetry of John Keble, on whose character and work he wrote an essay; but he remained faithful to his Presbyterian upbringing. After leaving Oxford he took a mastership at Rugby School under Archibald Campbell Tait. In 1857 Shairp became assistant to the professor of humanity in the University of St Andrews, and in 1861 he was appointed to that chair. In 1868 he was presented to the principalship of the United Colle ...
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Adolphus William Ward
Sir Adolphus William Ward (2 December 1837 – 19 June 1924) was an English historian and man of letters. Life Ward was born at Hampstead, London, the son of John Ward. He was educated in Germany and at Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1866, Ward was appointed professor of history and English literature in Owens College, Manchester, and was principal from 1890 to 1897, when he retired. He took an active part in the foundation of Victoria University, of which he was vice-chancellor from 1886 to 1890 and from 1894 to 1896, He was elected to membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 5.3.1985 and he was a founder of Withington Girls' School in 1890. He was a Member of the Chetham Society, serving as a member of council from 1884 and as president from 1901 until 1915. In 1897, the freedom of the city of Manchester was conferred upon him, he delivered the Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford in 1898, and on 29 October 1900 he was elected master of Peter ...
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Robert Southey
Robert Southey (; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic poetry, Romantic school, and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a radical but became steadily more conservative as he gained respect for Britain and its institutions. Other romantics such as Lord Byron, Byron accused him of siding with the establishment for money and status. He is remembered especially for the poem "After Blenheim" and the original version of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears". Life Robert Southey was born in Wine Street, Bristol, to Robert Southey and Margaret Hill. He was educated at Westminster School, London (where he was expelled for writing an article in ''The Flagellant'', a magazine he originated,Margaret Drabble ed: ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' (6th edition, Oxford, 2000), about criticized the school's practice of ex ...
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Edward Dowden
Edward Dowden (; 3 May 18434 April 1913) was an Irish critic, professor, and poet. Biography He was the son of John Wheeler Dowden, a merchant and landowner, and was born at Cork, three years after his brother John, who became Bishop of Edinburgh in 1886. Edward's literary tastes emerged early, in a series of essays written at the age of twelve. His home education continued at Queen's College, Cork and at Trinity College, Dublin. He contributed to the literary magazine '' Kottabos.'' He had a distinguished career, becoming president of the Philosophical Society, and won the vice-chancellor's prize for English verse and prose, and the first senior moderatorship in ethics and logic. In 1867 he was elected professor of oratory and English literature in Dublin University. Dowden's first book, ''Shakspere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art'' (1875),Dowden 1875, ''Shakspere: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art'': Online editionin HathiTrust Digital Library. resulted f ...
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (né Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that town. Hawthorne entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel ''Fanshawe (novel), Fanshawe''; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work. He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as ''Twice-Told Tales''. The following year, he became engaged to Sophia Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a Transcendentalism, transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord ...
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Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of Philosophy, philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James. He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between ''émigré ''Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as ''The Portrait of a Lady''. His later works, such as ''The Ambassadors'', ''The Wings of the Dove'' and ''The Golden Bowl'' were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their compos ...
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John Milton
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem ''Paradise Lost'' was written in blank verse and included 12 books, written in a time of immense religious flux and political upheaval. It addressed the fall of man, including the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan, and God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden. ''Paradise Lost'' elevated Milton's reputation as one of history's greatest poets. He also served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell. Milton achieved fame and recognition during his lifetime. His celebrated '' Areopagitica'' (1644) condemning pre-publication censorship is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. His desire for freedom extended beyond his philosophy and was reflected in his style, which included his introduction of new words ...
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Mark Pattison (academic)
Mark Pattison (10 October 1813 – 30 July 1884) was an English author and a Church of England priest. He served as Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Life He was the son of the rector of Hauxwell, North Riding of Yorkshire, and was privately educated by his father, Mark James Pattison. His sister was Dorothy Wyndlow Pattison (" Sister Dora"). In 1832, he matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. degree in 1836 with second-class honours. After other attempts to obtain a fellowship, he was elected in 1839 to a Yorkshire fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, an anti- Puseyite College. Pattison was at this time a Puseyite, and greatly under the influence of John Henry Newman, for whom he worked, helping in the translation of Thomas Aquinas's ''Catena Aurea'', and writing in the ''British Critic'' and '' Christian Remembrancer''. He was ordained a priest in 1843, and in the same year became tutor of Lincoln College, where he rapidly made a reputation as a cle ...
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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke (; 12 January [New Style, NS] 1729 – 9 July 1797) was an Anglo-Irish Politician, statesman, journalist, writer, literary critic, philosopher, and parliamentary orator who is regarded as the founder of the Social philosophy, social and Philosophy of culture, cultural philosophy of conservatism.Andrew Heywood, ''Political Ideologies: An Introduction''. Third Edition. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 74. Regarded as one of the most influential conservative thinkers and writers, Burke spent most of his political career in Great Britain and was elected as a member of Parliament (MP) from 1766 to 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig (British political party), Whig Party. His writings and literary publications influenced British conservative thought to a great extent, and helped establish the earliest foundations for modern conservatism and liberal democracy. His writings also played a crucial role in influencing public views and opinions in Britain ...
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John Morley
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn, (24 December 1838 – 23 September 1923), was a British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor. Initially a journalist in the North of England and then editor of the newly Liberal-leaning ''Pall Mall Gazette'' from 1880 to 1883, he was elected a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Liberal Party in 1883. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1886 and between 1892 and 1895; Secretary of State for India between 1905 and 1910 and again in 1911; and Lord President of the Council between 1910 and 1914. Morley was a distinguished political commentator, and biographer of his hero, William Ewart Gladstone. Morley is best known for his writings and for his "reputation as the last of the great nineteenth-century Liberals". He opposed imperialism and the Second Boer War. He supported Home Rule for Ireland. His opposition to British entry into the First World War as an ally of Russia led him to leave the government in August 1914. Ba ...
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William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray ( ; 18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was an English novelist and illustrator. He is known for his Satire, satirical works, particularly his 1847–1848 novel ''Vanity Fair (novel), Vanity Fair'', a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel ''The Luck of Barry Lyndon'', which was Barry Lyndon, adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick. Thackeray was born in Calcutta, British India, and was sent to England after his father's death in 1815. He studied at various schools and briefly attended Trinity College, Cambridge, before leaving to travel Europe. Thackeray squandered much of his inheritance on gambling and unsuccessful newspapers. He turned to journalism to support his family, primarily working for ''Fraser's Magazine'', ''The Times'', and ''Punch (magazine), Punch''. His wife Isabella suffered from mental illness. Thackeray gained fame with his novel ''Vanity Fair'' and produced several other notable works. He unsuccessfully ran f ...
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