2 Mr. Edward Arnold's Spring Announcements. 



A SURVEY OF 

 ENGLISH LITERATURE 



(1780-1880). 



By OLIVER ELTON, 



HON. D.LITT. DURHAM AND MANCHESTER, 

 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL. 



From 1 780- 1 830. Two Vols. 32s. net. 

 From 1 830-1880. Two Vols. 32s. net. 



With the publication of the two new volumes dealing with the 

 period 1830- 1880 Professor Elton completes his fine work on 

 English Literature during the hundred years antecedent to 1880. 

 The plan and arrangement of both books is the same. With 

 regard to the later one the author in his preface says, " Here are 

 another fifty years chronicled; that they form a real, not an 

 artificial period, the book itself must prove. And the aim is still 

 critical, rather than simply historical, although the historical 

 pattern and background have been kept well in mind. I hope, 

 at least, to have shown that more Victorian prose and verse 

 deserves to live than is sometimes imagined." 



As has been said, the general aim of the two works is critical — 

 they are a series of judgments and appreciations — but there is 

 also an historical background and setting ; and a mass of notes, 

 printed at the end of each volume, and meant primarily for 

 scholars, gives further evidence on points of detail as well as 

 some bibliographical guidance. The text, however, it is hoped, 

 will not be found by the more general reader to be overloaded 

 with learned matter. 



"We shall not disguise our opinion that in its union of freshness and 

 maturity, of versatile sensibility and incisive clearness, applied to an immense 

 mass of exact and first-hand knowledge, it bids fair to take its place as the 

 most authentic judgment of our generation upon the Victorian age." — 

 Professor Herford in the Manchester Guardian. 



" We have no historian of literature superior to Mr. Elton in the art of 

 giving balanced impressions of a wide and varied district of letters, without 

 favour and without prejudice. He possesses the purely judicial faculty to an 

 extent unparalleled in contemporary criticism. He has the quiet confidence 

 of a man who is aware that the concentration of a lifetime has equipped him 

 with knowledge that cannot be challenged." — Mr. Edmund Gosse in the 

 Sunday Times. 



" There is not in the whole range of these volumes a chapter that it is not 

 a pleasure as well as a profit to read ; and for any student of English literature 

 the work is invaluable. There is information, indeed, exact and copious 

 enough to make this survey a standard textbook of the period ; but happily 

 there are other qualities— qualities of the best criticism — which surely reserve 

 it for a higher fate." — Morning Post. 



