Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Series
  3. Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies

This series provides a high-quality selection of early printings of literary works, textual editions, anthologies and literary criticism which are of lasting scholarly interest. Ranging from Old English to Shakespeare to early twentieth-century work from around the world, these books offer a valuable resource for scholars in reception history, textual editing and literary studies.

Refine search

Refine search

Content type:
Publication date:
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

451 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies

Page 18 of 23

Mary Howitt
  • An Autobiography
  • Volume 1
  • Mary Botham Howitt
  • Edited by Margaret Howitt
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    27 January 2011
    First published in:
    1889
  • Mary Howitt (1799–1888) was one of the most prolific female writers and translators of her day, producing over a hundred titles in her lifetime. Held in high regard by her contemporaries, Howitt was best known for her Scandinavian interests, particularly for her translations of Frederika Bremer and Hans Christian Andersen. She also published numerous collections of poetry and stories, sometimes in partnership with her husband, the writer William Howitt. This two-volume autobiography was published posthumously in 1889, and was completed and edited by her daughter Margaret. Volume 1 covers the first forty-four years of Howitt's life: a Quaker childhood, marriage to William Howitt, the birth of their children, and family life in Nottingham, Esher, and Heidelberg. It also includes several illustrations of family members and various residences. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=howima.

The Life of Charlotte Brontë
  • Volume 2
  • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    16 September 2010
    First published in:
    1857
  • Published two years after the novelist's death, this two-volume work is the first and the best-known of the many biographies of the Brontë family. Written by the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) the book was instrumental in the creation of the Brontës' public image as a family set apart by literary genius and personal tragedy. Gaskell's chief source for the biography was some 350 letters between Charlotte and her friend Ellen Nussey, letters which Charlotte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls, had asked Nussey to destroy after his wife's death, fearing they would damage her reputation. Volume 2 covers Charlotte's writing of The Professor, the publication of Jane Eyre, the deaths of Branwell, Emily and Anne, the publication of Shirley and Villette, her correspondence with Thackeray, Gaskell and Martineau, and her eventual marriage in 1854 to Nicholls, her father's curate. It concludes with a description of Charlotte's funeral.

Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence
  • Volume 2
  • Henry Crabb Robinson
  • Edited by Thomas Sadler
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    06 January 2011
    First published in:
    1869
  • Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867) was a lawyer, journalist and indefatigable diarist, who was acquainted with almost all the important figures in English and European cultural circles. His surviving writings amount to almost one hundred volumes, from which this selection was compiled in 1869. He studied at Jena where he became acquainted with Goethe and Schiller, and became foreign editor for The Times, despatching eyewitness reports on the Battle of Corunna. He travelled to Switzerland and Italy with Wordsworth, and his reminiscences of William Blake are an important source of information on that visionary. He attended Coleridge's public lectures, recording not only the content but anecdotes about the audiences. Other activities included helping found the Athenaeum Club and University College, London. The combination of anecdote and critical appraisal of the notables about whom he writes makes the diaries a valuable source for the culture of the nineteenth century.

The Life of John Ruskin
  • Volume 2, 1860–1900
  • Edward Tyas Cook
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    01 April 2010
    First published in:
    1911
  • In 1911, the New York Times alerted its readers to the forthcoming 'authoritative' biography of Ruskin with the words 'out of a life's devotion to Ruskin and the Herculean task of editing the definitive Ruskin, Mr E. T. Cook is to give us a definitive Ruskin biography also. It will have the authority of a brilliant Oxford scholar, combined with the charm and lightness of a style which makes Mr Cook one of the first of English journalists'. Cook had been given complete access to Ruskin's diaries, notebooks and letters by his literary executors, and Ruskin's family and friends co-operated fully with him. His depth of knowledge of, and sympathy for, his subject make Cook's biography a vital tool for anyone wishing to understand Ruskin's extraordinary achievements in so many fields. Volume 2 covers the period from 1860 to Ruskin's death in 1900, and includes an index to both volumes.

Matthew Prior
  • A Study of his Public Career and Correspondence
  • Leopold George Wickham Legg
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    30 September 2010
    First published in:
    1921
  • Matthew Prior (1664–1721) was a minor poet and diplomat under King William III and subsequently Queen Anne. As an envoy to the Netherlands and France and negotiator of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 he had a ringside seat at the European power struggles of his time, while at the same time forging a literary career by publishing poetry and angling for the post of Poet Laureate. Prior's surviving correspondence to his patrons and paymasters is a uniquely witty record of diplomatic life. The first full-length biography of Prior, this book was first published in 1921. Its author, Leopold George Wickham Legg, was an editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. The appendixes include detailed information about Prior's family background and transcriptions of some of his surviving letters and a diary from 1712.

Landmarks of a Literary Life 1820–1892
  • Camilla Crosland
  • Published online:
    07 September 2011
    Print publication:
    28 October 2010
    First published in:
    1893
  • Camilla Crosland (1812–1895) was a British author whose literary career spanned sixty years of the nineteenth century. Although best known as a poet, she was also a prolific writer of short stories, novels and articles. In the late 1850s she became involved with spiritualism, and published influential works on the subject. This volume, first published in 1893, contains her detailed autobiography. Crosland describes her long life chronologically, describing the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the death of George III and the characters and lives of the many influential authors she met during her career. She also provides anecdotes and detailed descriptions of early Victorian society and the development of literature to appeal to a broader readership. This volume provides a fascinating retrospect of early Victorian social life. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=crosca

Caxtoniana
  • A Series of Essays on Life, Literature, and Manners
  • Volume 1
  • Edward Bulwer Lytton
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    02 June 2011
    First published in:
    1864
  • In 1849 Edward Bulwer Lytton published the popular novel The Caxtons, about an eccentric family who claimed descent from the printer William Caxton. Its hero, Pisistratus Caxton, was named as the author of two subsequent works, My Novel (1853) and What Will He Do With It? (1859), which were less successful. Bulwer Lytton was referring to those novels when he named this two-volume collection of literary and philosophical essays Caxtoniana, first published in 1863 and here reprinted from the 1864 edition. They were the result of his wide reading on scientific, philosophical and occult subjects which he made use of in several of his works, particularly the supernatural A Strange Story (1862). Many of the essays in Caxtoniana deal with morality and the artist, others with literary style, psychology, politics and readership. Lytton claimed that these subjects were expressed in the form of romance in the 'Caxton' novels.

The Cambridge Shakespeare
  • Volume 1
  • William Shakespeare
  • Edited by William George Clark, William Aldis Wright
  • Published online:
    05 August 2011
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1863
  • The Cambridge Shakespeare was published in nine volumes between 1863 and 1866. Its careful editorial principles, attractive page design and elegant typography have withstood the test of time. This text was based on a thorough collation of the four Folios and of all the Quarto editions of the separate plays, the base text being the 1623 Folio. The critical apparatus appears at the foot of the page, but for passages where the Quarto differs significantly the entire Quarto text appears in small type after the received text. Notes at the end of each play explain variants, emendations, and passages of unusual difficulty or interest. Grammar and metre were generally left unchanged by the editors, but punctuation was normalised and nineteenth-century orthography was adopted instead of the variable Elizabethan spelling. In a bold move for a Victorian edition, the editors restored various 'profane' expressions where metre or sense demanded it.

George Eliot
  • Leslie Stephen
  • Published online:
    05 July 2011
    Print publication:
    09 September 2010
    First published in:
    1902
  • This volume was originally published as part of the English Men of Letters series in 1902. This series aimed to bring a critical framework for reading and analysing novels to the large literate audience which had emerged as the result of mass education campaigns in the nineteenth century. Written by eminent scholars and combining biographical details with literary criticism, the English Men of Letters series was extremely successful and occupied a distinctive position in British literary education in the early twentieth century. Written by Victorian scholar and critic Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) this volume examines the life and literary achievements of George Eliot (1819–1880), the first woman novelist to be included in the series. Arranged around Eliot's published novels, the biographical discussion of her life detailing her domestic life and literary criticism of her works reveals late Victorian ideals concerning fiction and a respectable life.

My Long Life
  • An Autobiographic Sketch
  • Mary Cowden Clarke
  • Published online:
    05 July 2011
    Print publication:
    28 October 2010
    First published in:
    1896
  • Mary Cowden Clarke (1809–1898) was the daughter of the music publisher Vincent Novello. Charles and Mary Lamb were family friends, and under the inspiration of their Tales from Shakespeare, Mary became a noted Shakespeare scholar, her major work being the Concordance to Shakespeare, which took twelve years to compile, and was to remain a standard work for half a century. From 1856 Clarke and her husband Charles lived in Italy, continuing to publish essays and books, including their joint Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare. This autobiography, published in 1896, contains many anecdotes and memories of the literary and musical circles in which Mary moved throughout her life: the Lambs, John Keats, the Shelleys, Dickens, Leigh Hunt and Mendelssohn all appear. The book is written in a vivid and engaging style, and records a fascinating nineteenth century life. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=clarmc

The Life of Charlotte Brontë
  • Volume 1
  • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
  • Published online:
    05 July 2011
    Print publication:
    16 September 2010
    First published in:
    1857
  • Published two years after the novelist's death, this two-volume work is the first and the best-known of the many biographies of the Brontë family. Written by the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65), the book was instrumental in the creation of the Brontës' public image as a family set apart by literary genius and personal tragedy. Gaskell's chief source for the biography was some 350 letters between Charlotte and her friend Ellen Nussey, letters which Charlotte's husband had asked Nussey to destroy after his wife's death, fearing they would damage her reputation. Volume 1 consists of 14 chapters and covers the Brontë ancestry, Charlotte's time at school and as a governess, her juvenilia, the 'deplorable conduct' of her laudanum-addicted brother Branwell, and the publication of her poems, along with those of her sisters Anne and Emily, in the volume Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell in 1846.

Lost Plays of Shakespeare's Age
  • Charles Jasper Sisson
  • Published online:
    05 July 2011
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1936
  • C. J. Sisson (1885–1966) was Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature in the University of London. His main research interest was Shakespeare, but in this study, first published in 1936, he explores what legal records can tell us about lost early modern plays and entertainments. The Court of Star Chamber prosecuted a number of offences against moral order and frequently took action against the dramatic representation of sedition and libel. Its records often provide the only evidence of Tudor plays and entertainments never printed and lost in manuscript. Sisson explores several cases in detail, identifying the people who filed complaints against libel as well as exploring all possible evidence about what the plays contained. Sisson's study remains of value as the first to uncover archival information about lost works of Chapman, Dekker, Ford and Webster as well as anonymous jigs, verse satires and libels.

A Study of Shakespeare's Versification
  • With an Inquiry into the Trustworthiness of the Early Texts an Examination of the 1616 Folio of Ben Jonson's Works and Appendices including a Revised Test of 'Antony and Cleopatra'
  • Matthew Albert Bayfield
  • Published online:
    01 June 2011
    Print publication:
    20 July 2009
    First published in:
    1920
  • The Reverend Matthew Albert Bayfield (1852–1922) published this study at the end of his life after a long career as classical scholar, editor of Greek tragedies and headmaster of several public schools. He gives an account of the structure and characteristic features of Shakespeare's dramatic verse and argues that it has been fundamentally misunderstood by other scholars. In particular, he analyses the use of contractions or abbreviations found in the Folio and Quartos and continued in the editions of his own time. He weighs up which of the contractions familiar from many editions were actually Shakespeare's, and what that reveals about how Shakespeare might have intended his prose and verse to be spoken. Bayfield's many appendices evaluating the metre of specific lines and his detailed linguistic analysis remain thought-provoking for modern editors and scholars of Shakespeare.

Widsith
  • A Study in Old English Heroic Legend
  • Raymond Wilson Chambers
  • Published online:
    16 May 2011
    Print publication:
    31 October 2010
    First published in:
    1912
  • One of the few records of German heroic poetry, Widsith was found in the Exeter Book, a manuscript of Old English poetry compiled in the late tenth century. The tale, in which the wandering poet and narrator Widsith recounts his travels across northern Europe, is often seen as a catalogue of tribes, people and heroes who existed between the third and fifth centuries. Yet it is also, in Raymond Wilson Chambers' words, a rare and valuable 'record of lost heroic song'. Originally published in 1912, Chambers' study provides an introduction to the background of the German heroic tradition, as well as detailed analyses of specific aspects of Widsith, such as the metre, geography, and critical reception of the poem. This scholarly edition also includes an annotated version of the poem, and maps, as well as an appendix which will be valuable to students and scholars of Old English literature.

English Women of Letters
  • Biographical Sketches
  • Volume 1
  • Julia Kavanagh
  • Published online:
    16 May 2011
    Print publication:
    16 September 2010
    First published in:
    1863
  • The Irish novelist Julia Kavanagh (1824–1877) published English Women of Letters in two volumes in 1862. The work, which formed a pair with French Women of Letters (1862), traces the contribution of English women writers, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, to the development and formation of the modern novel. Volume 1 contains biographical sketches of five female authors followed by evaluations of their most important works: Aphra Behn (1640–1689) and Oroonoko; Sarah Fielding (1710–1768) and David Simple; Madame D'Arblay (1752–1840), also known as Fanny Burney, and Evelina and Cecilia; Charlotte Smith (1749–1806) and Emmeline, Ethelinda and The Old Manor House; and Ann Radcliff (1764–1823), and four of her gothic novels. This important work brought to attention in the Victorian mind the importance of these writers. It has served for many generations of English literature students as a biographical companion to women writers.

English Women of Letters
  • Biographical Sketches
  • Volume 2
  • Julia Kavanagh
  • Published online:
    16 May 2011
    Print publication:
    16 September 2010
    First published in:
    1863
  • Julia Kavanagh (1824–1877) published English Women of Letters in two volumes in 1862. The work, which formed a pair with French Women of Letters (1862), traces the contribution of English women writers, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, to the development of the modern novel. Volume 2 contains brief biographical sketches and evaluations of the major works of five important woman writers: Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821) and A Simple Story; Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849) and Castle Rackrent, Belinda and Tales of Fasionable Life; Jane Austen (1775–1817) and her six major novels; Amelia Opie (1769–1853) and Father and Daughter and Adeline Mowbray; and Lady Morgan (c.1776–1859) and The Wild Irish Girl and O'Donnel. This important work brought to attention in the Victorian mind the importance of these writers. It has served for many generations of English literature students as a biographical companion to women writers.

The Bacon–Shakspere Question Answered
  • Charlotte Carmichael Stopes
  • Published online:
    21 April 2011
    Print publication:
    18 November 2010
    First published in:
    1889
  • Charlotte Carmichael Stopes (1840–1829) is best known as the mother of birth control advocate Marie Stopes. Like her daughter, Stopes forged the way for women seeking academic careers: she was the first woman in Scotland to graduate from university, and was later elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In this monograph Stopes resolves to settle once and for all whether or not Francis Bacon wrote the plays attributed to William Shakespeare, concluding that the Baconian theory is wholly without foundation. Over nearly 300 pages of erudite argument, Stopes examines the numerous distinctions between the lives and experiences of the two writers, their differing styles of writing, and the evidence provided by Shakespeare's contemporaries. Stopes' book also includes extensive appendices providing background information on Shakespeare and the early modern theatre. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=stopch

Specimens of Hausa Literature
  • Charles Henry Robinson
  • Published online:
    29 March 2011
    Print publication:
    31 October 2010
    First published in:
    1896
  • Hausa is an African language originating in Niger and northern Nigeria and spoken widely in West and Central Africa as a trading language. This anthology of Hausa texts (mainly Islamic religious verse and historical narratives) was the first publication supported by the short-lived Hausa Association, formed in 1891 to promote the study of the Hausa language and people. Under its aegis the Reverend C. H. Robinson went on to produce a Hausa Grammar in 1897 and a Dictionary in 1899, making great advances in Western knowledge of the language, despite the fact that some in the field criticised him for his relatively short exposure to Hausa-speaking countries. With facsimile reproductions of the manuscripts at actual size, the texts collected in this book were the first published specimens of Hausa writing. Each text is transcribed into in roman script and an English translation is given on facing pages.

The Cambridge Reinaert Fragments
  • (Culemann Fragments)
  • Edited by Karl Breul
  • Published online:
    29 March 2011
    Print publication:
    31 October 2010
    First published in:
    1927
  • The Reinaert Fragments are a collection of seven pages of a Middle Dutch poem attributed to the fifteenth-century Flemish writer Hinrek van Alckmer, and printed in Antwerp in about 1487. This book, originally published in 1927, contains photographic reproductions of the pages, alongside clear transcriptions of the text and three beautiful woodcut illustrations. Karl Breul's detailed introduction sketches the history and development of the story of Reynard the Fox, from its origins in oral tradition and the medieval beast epic to Goethe's famous 'Reinecke Fuchs', indicating the place of the Reinaert poem amongst the various verse and prose versions. The book also includes a corrected version of the van Alckmer fragments, and examines their relationship with the Reinaert II and Reinke texts. The book will be useful to those studying Middle Dutch and Middle Low German literature or printing history, and others interested in the Reynard story.

A Book of Sibyls
  • Mrs. Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen
  • Anne Thackeray Ritchie
  • Published online:
    01 March 2011
    Print publication:
    18 November 2010
    First published in:
    1883
  • Anne Thackeray Ritchie (1837–1919) was a writer and the eldest daughter of the novelist W. M. Thackeray. She had a tumultuous childhood: her mother suffered from depression and was eventually committed to a sanatorium, and the family experienced poverty before her father's literary success. Anne was extremely close to her father, who admired her intellect and encouraged her writing. When he died, Anne set up house with her sister Harriet and her brother-in-law, the literary journalist Leslie Stephen. Anne's novels were serialised in the Cornhill Magazine, which her father had edited, and their success established her literary reputation. A Book of Sibyls is Anne's study of four female writers: the poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld and the novelists Amelia Opie, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen. For more information on this author, see http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=ritcan

Page 18 of 23