ENGLISH PROSE CRITICAL ESSAYS EDITED WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES BY THOMAS H. DICKINSON, PH.D. ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AND FREDERICK W. ROE, A.M. INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN LELAND STANNLEG NEW YORK: CINCINNATI CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY PREFACE IN preparing the present work the editors have restricted themselves to a single type of literary expression, the critical essay. They have endeavored to trace, in a series of ten selected essays, the development of English criticism in the nineteenth century. choosing the material they have been influenced by something more than mere style. An underlying coherence in content, typical of the thought of the era in question, may be traced throughout. The book is designed to furnish a series of essays covering a definite period and exhibiting the individuality in each author's method of criticism. The subjectmatter in these selections provides interesting material for intensive study and class-room discussion, and each essay is an example of excellent, though varying, English style. It has not been the intention of the editors to place the different authors represented on the same level, either as critics or as stylists. Nor do they claim to have, necessarily, selected the best essay of each writer; they have sought, rather, to choose that one which appears to them to be most typical of the author's critical principles, and, at the same time, representative of the critical tendency of his age. A volume compiled to serve the ends outlined above |