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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.

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451 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies

Page 5 of 23

The Epistolary Correspondence of Sir Richard Steele
  • Including his Familiar Letters to his Wife and Daughters, to Which Are Prefixed, Fragments of Three Plays, Two of Them Undoubtedly Steele's, the Third Supposed to Be Addison's
  • Volume 2
  • Richard Steele
  • Edited by John Nichols
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1809
  • Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729), soldier, courtier and dramatist, is best remembered for his founding of two literary and political periodicals, the Tatler and the Spectator (the latter jointly with his friend Joseph Addison). These two volumes of his letters to friends and family were compiled by the publisher John Nichols and published in 1809. Nichols claims in his preface that these letters, 'some of them evidently scribbled when their amiable Author was probably not in the very best condition for penmanship', are nonetheless of great interest, 'as they contain the private and undisguised opinions of the man who took upon himself to be the Censor of the age'. Volume 2 contains letters to his wife and daughters, and to literary and political figures of his day, including Sir Robert Walpole, Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, the duke of Newcastle, and the theatre managers Cibber and Booth.

Recollections of Writers
  • With Letters of Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, Douglas Jerrold, and Charles Dickens
  • Charles Cowden Clarke, Mary Cowden Clarke
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    17 July 2014
  • Charles Cowden Clarke (1787–1877) and his wife Mary (1809–98) were born into literary and musical circles which deeply shaped their careers and supplied lifelong friendships with great artists and writers. Among Charles's closest school friends was John Keats, and his acquaintances later included William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Coleridge and the Shelleys. Mary's childhood introduction to Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare led to a lifetime of Shakespearean scholarship, friendship with the Lambs, and her performance in several Shakespearean roles for the amateur company run by Charles Dickens. Wed in 1828, the Cowden Clarkes were, as Mary writes, 'among the happiest of married lovers for more than forty-eight years', publishing jointly and enjoying mutual friendships. Their insightful recollections of their literary friends, first published serially towards the end of Charles's life, were afterwards collected by Mary, together with many important letters, and published in this 1878 work.

Robert Chester's ‘Love's Martyr; Or, Rosalins Complaint'
  • With its Supplement, ‘Diverse Poeticall Essaies on the Turtle and Phoenix'
  • Robert Chester
  • Edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    31 July 2014
  • The literary scholar Alexander Balloch Grosart (1827–99) reprinted this allegorical poem by Robert Chester (fl.c.1586–1604) with an introduction and notes in 1878. Grosart incorrectly identified the poem's author as a certain Sir Robert Chester of Royston. Later research suggests Chester served as a chaplain or secretary in the household of the work's dedicatee, Sir John Salusbury. Originally printed in 1601, the grandiloquent, meandering poem is chiefly remembered for the works appended to it. These include original poems by Chester's contemporaries, Shakespeare, Jonson, Chapman and Marston, as well as the anonymous 'Ignoto' and 'Vatum Chorus'. All the poems treat Chester's theme, an invented myth describing the chaste, sacrificial love between a phoenix and a turtledove. Scholars continue to debate the identity of the historical figures signified by these birds, especially in Shakespeare's cryptic contribution.

Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century
  • Comprizing Biographical Memoirs of William Bowyer, Printer, F.S.A., and Many of his Learned Friends
  • Volume 3
  • John Nichols
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    28 August 2014
    First published in:
    1812
  • In this nine-volume work, published between 1812 and 1815, the author and publisher John Nichols (1745–1826) provides biographical notes on publishers, writers and artists of the eighteenth century, and also gives 'an incidental view of the progress and advancement of literature in this kingdom during the last century'. (A shorter version had been published in 1782.) His subjects range from the publisher William Bowyer to Henry Fielding and Horace Walpole, and also include histories of individual publishing houses and of genres such as lexicography. The work remains a useful source of biographical material on authors and publishers at a period when many of the literary genres we take for granted, such as the novel, the autobiography and the analytical history, were first being developed. Volume 3 includes memoirs of Henry Fielding and the printer John Baskerville, and a history of the Stationers' Company.

Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esquire
  • With Memoirs of his Life and Writings, Composed by Himself
  • Volume 1
  • Edward Gibbon
  • Edited by John Baker Holroyd
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    17 April 2014
    First published in:
    1796
  • On the death of Edward Gibbon (1737–94), his unpublished papers were left to his friend John Baker Holroyd, first earl of Sheffield, who published them in two volumes in 1796. Gibbon had written six manuscript accounts of his own life, and, according to Sheffield, had always intended to publish his autobiography in his lifetime. The memoir as edited by Sheffield begins with Gibbon's family history, and taking in his education, travels, and career as a historian, finishes with his anxiety over the future of Europe in 1788. Sheffield then continues the story until Gibbon's death through his correspondence, providing a linking narrative, and this, together with 210 other letters to and from Gibbon, takes up Volume 1. His great work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is also reissued (in the 1896–1900 edition by J. B. Bury) in the Cambridge Library Collection.

Caliban
  • The Missing Link
  • Daniel Wilson
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    21 August 2014
  • Having acquired a Shakespeare folio for a few shillings, anthropologist Daniel Wilson (1816–92) found in The Tempest a source of scientific intrigue. Writing more than two hundred years before Darwin propounded his theory of evolution, in his final play Shakespeare had created a missing link caught between the animal and the human. In this monograph, first published in 1873, Wilson uses the strange and unfortunate character of Caliban as a means through which to explore the principles of evolution. He traces many of the play's plot devices back to real events that perhaps inspired them - from storms in Bermuda to records of semi-human creatures around the world - and brings literary commentary into science as he links the relationships set out in the play to anthropological principles. This interdisciplinary approach makes the book both an entertaining exegesis of the play and a uniquely accessible explanation of contemporary scientific theories.

Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore
  • Volume 4
  • Thomas Moore
  • Edited by John Russell
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    28 March 2013
    First published in:
    1853
  • Throughout his professional life, the poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852) was variously celebrated and vilified for both his verse and his politics. Born in Dublin, he remained an ardent Irish patriot until his death. This eight-volume collection of Moore's memoirs, diaries and letters, edited by his friend Lord John Russell (1792–1878) and first published between 1853 and 1856, provides rare insights into a man whose genius was applauded by the Morning Chronicle as 'embracing almost all sides of imaginative literature, of criticism and philosophy'. Volume 4 contains Moore's diary for the period 1822–5, during which time his reputation for sensuousness and political satire was confirmed with the publication of The Loves of the Angels (1823) and Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823). The volume opens with engravings of his fellow radical poet Samuel Rogers and the cottage at Mayfield where Moore wrote much of Lalla Rookh.

The Diary of Dr John William Polidori, 1816
  • Relating to Byron, Shelley, Etc.
  • John William Polidori
  • Edited by William Michael Rossetti
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    17 July 2014
    First published in:
    1911
  • John William Polidori (1795–1821) was, for a brief period, the personal physician to Lord Byron. Half Italian, he was the uncle of the Rossetti siblings, and it was William Michael Rossetti, in his role as family recorder, who published Polidori's manuscript diary after nearly a century, in 1911. This account of his time with Byron (which ended two months later when they quarrelled and parted company) is the only contemporary account of the few weeks, crucial to the development of the Romantic movement, during which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein arose from a storytelling competition at the Villa Diodati. Polidori's later career as a physician and writer was hampered by a severe accident in 1817 which left him with brain damage. His most famous work, The Vampyre, was published in 1819, but attributed to Byron, leading both men to threaten the publisher with lawsuits. Polidori died (probably a suicide) two years later.

Chawton Manor and its Owners
  • A Family History
  • William Austen Leigh, Montagu George Knight
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    10 July 2014
    First published in:
    1911
  • Chawton House is famous today as the home of Jane Austen's brother Edward, who was adopted by a wealthy relative, Thomas Knight, and inherited his Hampshire estate. Edward offered the former bailiff's cottage close to the great house to his mother, who lived there with her unmarried daughters Jane and Cassandra. The house is now a study centre and library, for women's writing especially, but when this book was published in 1911 the building was still the Knight family home. Montagu Knight, the grandson of Edward, supplied material from the archives of the manor, while the book was largely written by his cousin William Austen Leigh, the son of Jane's nephew and memorialist. It covers the history of the manor from the Norman Conquest to the death of the second Edward in 1879, and, apart from the Austen connection, is a fascinating illustrated history of a typical English parish.

The Life, Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton
  • Volume 2
  • Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    13 February 2014
    First published in:
    1883
  • One of the most popular writers of his age, outsold only by Dickens, Edward George Bulwer Lytton (1803–73), first Baron Lytton, is notable for coining the phrases 'the great unwashed' and 'the pen is mightier than the sword', although his work is largely forgotten today. G. K. Chesterton's appraisal was that 'you could not have the Victorian Age without him'. Lytton requested that his son Edward Robert (1831–91), first Earl of Lytton, complete his autobiography. Complemented by letters and previously unpublished material - the better to flesh out the story of a prolific literary life - it appeared in two volumes in 1883. In his preface, Edward Robert writes that his main purpose is 'to illustrate my father's works by his life, and his life by his works'. Volume 2 completes the biographical narrative, including details of Lytton's later political life, correspondence with Disraeli and others, and work left unfinished.

The Aesthetic and Miscellaneous Works of Frederick von Schlegel
  • Friedrich von Schlegel
  • Translated by E. J. Millington
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    20 March 2014
  • Critic, poet and essayist Friedrich von Schlegel (1772–1829) was a leading figure of German Romanticism. This 1849 collection of his shorter works in English translation contains his key insights into literary criticism and art theory. While his early writings had championed classical forms and rejected modern styles, he went on to develop distinctly Romantic aesthetics and ethics. His 1794 treatise 'On the Limits of the Beautiful' demonstrates this philosophical transition in its effort to harmonise the elements of beauty: 'the richness of nature, the purity of love, and the symmetry of art'. Schlegel's other writings here apply his developing Romantic aesthetic to Christian art, Gothic architecture, and medieval poetry. The collection also includes the English translation of his seminal work on comparative grammar, Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808), which is also reissued in this series in the original German.

Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
  • Giving the Derivation, Source, or Origin of Common Phrases, Allusions, and Words that Have a Tale to Tell
  • Ebenezer Cobham Brewer
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    20 March 2014
  • First published in 1870, this 'museum of literary odds and ends' was condensed from material in a manuscript that was thrice the size of the finished book. At the end of his life, Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810–97) substantially revised and updated the Dictionary in 1895 and it has appeared in new versions ever since. Reissued here in its first edition, the work reflects Brewer's distinct style and draws on a lifetime's reading. Elucidating the etymology of some 20,000 unusual and everyday words and phrases, the collection touches on diverse subjects ranging from history and literature to mythology and magic. Brewer's charming preface describes the book as an 'alms-basket of words' and promises to examine terms such as 'killed with kindness' and 'kettle of fish'. Readers will be enlightened as to the original meaning of familiar and unfamiliar phrases, many of which have fallen out of use yet testify to the richness of an evolving language.

Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq.
  • Interspersed with Characters and Anecdotes of his Theatrical Contemporaries
  • Volume 2
  • Thomas Davies
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014
    First published in:
    1780
  • The most influential actor of his age, David Garrick (1717–79) shaped the London stage for over three decades as theatre manager at Drury Lane. He popularised a more natural style of acting, and did much to make Shakespeare the most revered English playwright. First published in 1780 and reissued here in the second edition of that year, this two-volume biography was written by Thomas Davies (c.1712–85). Samuel Johnson, a friend of the Garrick family, notably provided Davies with anecdotes and information on Garrick's early life. The work does not dwell on gossip or private life; it offers instead an informed portrait of the stage in Garrick's time. Davies had inhabited this world as a much less successful actor himself, before becoming a bookseller. His work is therefore a direct and valuable witness to theatrical London in the eighteenth century. The second volume covers the years 1763–79.

Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, Esq.
  • Interspersed with Characters and Anecdotes of his Theatrical Contemporaries
  • Volume 1
  • Thomas Davies
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    24 April 2014
    First published in:
    1780
  • The most influential actor of his age, David Garrick (1717–79) shaped the London stage for over three decades as theatre manager at Drury Lane. He popularised a more natural style of acting, and did much to make Shakespeare the most revered English playwright. First published in 1780 and reissued here in the second edition of that year, this two-volume biography was written by Thomas Davies (c.1712–85). Samuel Johnson, a friend of the Garrick family, notably provided Davies with anecdotes and information on Garrick's early life. The work does not dwell on gossip or private life; it offers instead an informed portrait of the stage in Garrick's time. Davies had inhabited this world as a much less successful actor himself, before becoming a bookseller. His work is therefore a direct and valuable witness to theatrical London in the eighteenth century. The first volume covers the years 1717–63.

Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esquire
  • With Memoirs of his Life and Writings, Composed by Himself
  • Volume 2
  • Edward Gibbon
  • Edited by John Baker Holroyd
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    17 April 2014
    First published in:
    1796
  • On the death of Edward Gibbon (1737–94), his unpublished papers were left to his friend John Baker Holroyd, first earl of Sheffield, who published them in two volumes in 1796. Volume 2 contains abstracts from Gibbon's reading, with his reflections on what he read, and extracts from his journal (sometimes in French, with a parallel translation), short pieces on various aspects of Roman history, an outline of his planned history of the world from the ninth to the end of the fifteenth century, literary criticism, a history of the House of Brunswick (ancestors of the Hanoverian British royal family), and a riposte to a criticism of his own great work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is also reissued (in the 1896–1900 edition by J. B. Bury) in the Cambridge Library Collection.

Handbook of Familiar Quotations
  • Chiefly from English Authors
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    20 March 2014
  • Originally published in 1853 and reissued here in the revised and enlarged third edition of 1859, this collection of verse quotations ranges across a broad spectrum of texts and authors. While modern scholarship has revealed the work's compiler to be Isabella Rushton Preston, very little beyond her name is known about her. Beginning with the Book of Genesis and other scriptural selections, the collection moves through Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope and many more. It also devotes space to the more contemporaneous poetry of Romantics such as Byron, Wordsworth and Coleridge. The choices of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry in particular offer modern readers an insight into the literary tastes of both the compiler and the society she inhabited. The brief preface expresses the hope that the work will prove 'useful and amusing' to readers who may already know a quotation but cannot name its source. A thorough index is also provided.

Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith
  • By his Daughter, Lady Holland, with a Selection from his Letters
  • Saba Holland
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    20 March 2014
  • First published in 1855 and reissued here in the second edition of that year, this two-volume work celebrates the life of the author, wit and clergyman Sydney Smith (1771–1845). A founder of the second Edinburgh Review, Smith is best remembered for his entertaining observations and witticisms. The work comprises a memoir, written by Smith's daughter Saba Holland (1802–66), and a selection of letters, edited by Sarah Austin (1793–1867). Together, the volumes offer private insights into a man who lived much of his life in the public eye. Volume 1 contains Holland's memoir, which includes biographical details as well as descriptions of her father's articles for the Edinburgh Review. Sharing her father's sense of humour, she peppers her account with many of his best jokes, while also emphasising his character as compassionate clergyman, loving father and dutiful friend.

Memoirs of the Life of Charles Macklin, Esq.
  • Principally Compiled from his Own Papers and Memorandums
  • Volume 1
  • James Thomas Kirkman
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    19 September 2013
  • Drawing on his own papers and first published in 1799, this two-volume account traces the colourful life of the actor and playwright Charles Macklin (c.1699–1797). His long career serves as the focal point in a history of the eighteenth-century theatre and its most celebrated performers. Hailed for his enduring interpretation of Shakespeare's Shylock, a role he played for some fifty years, Macklin has been credited with the theatre's move towards realism. His life was just as dramatic offstage, marked as it was by a series of controversies and fierce rivalries. In 1735 he was convicted of the manslaughter of a fellow actor in a quarrel over a wig, and in 1775 he successfully pressed charges of conspiracy against theatregoers who had rioted during his performances. Volume 1 covers Macklin's childhood and early career, including his trial for the killing of Thomas Hallam.

Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of Thomas Moore
  • Volume 1
  • Thomas Moore
  • Edited by John Russell
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    28 March 2013
    First published in:
    1853
  • Throughout his professional life, the poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852) was variously celebrated and vilified for both his verse and his politics. Born in Dublin, he remained an ardent Irish patriot until his death. This eight-volume collection of Moore's memoirs, diaries and letters, edited by his friend Lord John Russell (1792–1878) and first published between 1853 and 1856, provides rare insights into a man whose genius was applauded by the Morning Chronicle as 'embracing almost all sides of imaginative literature, of criticism and philosophy'. Volume 1 contains Moore's incomplete memoir, described by the Manchester Times as 'a readable and gossiping article', as well as an account of his infamous abortive duel with the critic Francis Jeffrey, and his personal correspondence from the period 1793–1813.

The Brontës Life and Letters
  • Being an Attempt to Present a Full and Final Record of the Lives of the Three Sisters, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë
  • Volume 1
  • Clement King Shorter
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    19 September 2013
  • First published in 1908, this two-volume collection was prepared by journalist, critic and Brontë enthusiast Clement King Shorter (1857–1926), following the appearance of Charlotte Brontë and her Circle (1896) and Charlotte Brontë and her Sisters (1905). Building on the research of Elizabeth Gaskell, the volumes document through correspondence the remarkable lives and literary careers of Charlotte (1816–55), Emily (1818–48) and Anne (1820–49). The use of previously unpublished manuscripts and letters served to broaden significantly the scope of the work. Volume 1 covers the family's background, the sisters' experiences at Cowan Bridge and Howarth, and the development of their literary talents. The volume concludes with the death of Branwell Brontë in 1848. Presenting a wealth of source material, this collection remains a treasure trove for those seeking to understand how classics of English literature came to be shaped by the world their authors inhabited.

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