Victorian Thinkers contains studies of four of the most influential critics of 19th-century British culture. Each was heralded a prophet in his own lifetime, and yet each was also regarded as misguided, and even mad, by his contemporaries. Their interests in art and culture led them to develop views on society and economics. Carlyle was a writer of extraordinary stature, radical in thought and style; Ruskin, who began his career as a critic of painting and architecture, developed his views to produce critiques of economics and social welfare; Arnold was a poet and literary critic, a definer of "culture" who later turned to social issues; and Morris, renowned for his work as artist and designer, championed a revolutionary socialism which would honour the civilizing effects of the arts. A.L. Le Quesne is also the author of "After Kilvert". George Landow has also written "The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin" and "Victorian Types, Victorian Shadows: Biblical Typology in Victorian Literature, Art and Thought". Stephan Collini is also the author of "Liberalism and Sociology", "That Noble Science of Politics" (with Donald Winch and John Burrow) and "Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850-1930". Peter Stansky is also the author of "Redesigning the World: William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts".

Victorian Thinkers: Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Morris (Past Masters)

Literature & Fiction

Collini, Stefan

Landow, George P.

Stansky, Peter

Le Quesne, A. L.

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Arnold (Past Masters)

This is a study of the writer Matthew Arnold (1822-88), in which the author aims to portray him as an attractive and relevant figure for the modern reader. He argues that it is a literary and social critic that Arnold chiefly commands attention today and to this end he concentrates on his prose writing of the 1860s and above all "Essays in Criticism" and "Culture and Anarchy", rather than his religious writings or poetry. Instead of providing a summary of all Arnold's views, Collini has aimed to present the tone and temper of his mind and the distinctive style in which it expressed itself. Extensive quotations have been used to bring this out. Collini is co-author of "That Noble Science of Politics".

British & Irish

Matthew Arnold left behind him a variety of literary achievements. This book begins with an examination of the Arnoldian "voice" and ends with an appraisal and a defense of some of the ways in which he has influenced modern English culture. The book seeks to reveal that it is as a social and literary critic--especially as the author of Essays in Criticism and Culture and Anarchy--that he still commands most attention today.

This imaginative and unusual book explores the moral sensibilities and cultural assumptions that were at the heart of political debate in Victorian and early twentieth-century Britain.  It focuses on the role of intellectuals as public moralists and suggests ways in which their more formal political theory rested upon habits of response and evaluation that were deeply embedded in wider social attitudes and aesthetic judgments.  Collini examines the characteristic idioms and strategies of argument employed in periodical and polemical writing, and reconstructs the sense of identity and of relation to an audience exhibited by social critics from John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold to J.M. Keynes and F.R. Leavis.

Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850-1930

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

This imaginative and unusual book explores the moral sensibilities and cultural assumptions that were at the heart of political debate in Victorian and early twentieth-century Britain. It focuses on the role of intellectuals as public moralists and suggests ways in which their more formal political theory rested upon habits of response and evaluation that were deeply embedded in wider social attitudes and aesthetic judgments. Collini examines the characteristic idioms and strategies of argument employed in periodical and polemical writing, and reconstructs the sense of identity and of relation to an audience exhibited by social critics from John Stuart Mill and Matthew Arnold to J.M. Keynes and F.R. Leavis.

Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850-1930 (Clarendon Paperbacks)

History

Europe

Clarendon Press

The work of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) has become an cultural reference-point. This volume examines the entire range of Arnold's literary, social and religious criticism, as well as his poetry, and places them in the context of 19th-century intellectualism.

Matthew Arnold: a Critical Portrait (Clarendon Paperbacks)

In this collection of engaging and readable essays, Stefan Collini shows how much can be gained from bringing a rigorous historical perspective to some of the most contentious issues in contemporary culture. Whether he is asking what it means to inhabit and possess a `national past', or reflecting on the role of the historian as social critic, whether he is scrutinizing the claims of Cultural Studies or challenging the assumptions about academic research whether he is pondering the future of literary biography or reassessing some of the leading minds in modern British culture, Collini writes with a rare blend of sympathy, sharpness, and wit. Explicitly addressed to the `non-specialist', these essays attempt to make some of the fruits of detailed scholarly research in various fields available to a wider audience. The book will interest (and delight) readers interested in history, literature, and contemporary cultural debate. This book is intended for readers interested in history literature and contemporary culture; scholars and students in History, English, Politics and Cultural Studies.

English Pasts: Essays in History and Culture

Business & Money

Finance

This is an accessible collection of essays by a leading historian and critic. Subjects include the idea of "the national past," the historian as social critic, the claims of Cultural Studies, the nature of academic "research," the function of the literary biography, and the lives and ideas of such figures as Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mill, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Bertrand Russell, R. H. Tawney, Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Williams, and Richard Hoggart.

In a series of penetrating and attractively readable essays, Stefan Collini explores aspects of the literary and intellectual culture of Britain from the early twentieth century to the present. Common Writing focuses chiefly on writers, critics, historians, and journalists who occupied wider public roles as cultural commentators or intellectuals, as well as on the periodicals and other genres through which they attempted to reach such audiences. Among the figures discussed are T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, J.B. Priestley, C.S. Lewis, Kingsley Amis, Nikolaus Pevsner, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Christopher Hitchens, and Michael Ignatieff. The essays explore the variety of such figures' writings - something that can get overlooked or forgotten when they are treated exclusively in terms of their contribution to one established or professional category such as 'novelist' or 'historian' - while capturing their distinctive writing voices and those indirect or implicit ways in which they position or reveal themselves in relation to specific readerships, disputes, and traditions. These essays engage with recent biographies, collections of letters, and new editions of classic works, thereby making some of the fruits of recent scholarly research available to a wider audience. Collini has been acclaimed as one of the most brilliant essayists of our time, and this collection shows him at his subtle, perceptive, and trenchant best. Common Writing will appeal to (and delight) readers interested in literature, history, and contemporary cultural debate.

Common Writing: Essays on Literary Culture and Public Debate

The Nostalgic Imagination: History in English Criticism

This unusual book explores the historical assumptions at work in the style of literary criticism that came to dominate English studies in the twentieth century. Stefan Collini shows how the work of critics renowned for their close attention to 'the words on the page' was in practice bound up with claims about the nature and direction of historical change, the interpretation of the national past, and the scholarship of earlier historians. Among the major figures examined in detail are T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, William Empson, and Raymond Williams, while there are also original discussions of such figures as Basil Willey, L.C. Knights, Q.D. Leavis, and Richard Hoggart. The Nostalgic Imagination argues that in the period between Eliot's The Sacred Wood and Williams's The Long Revolution, the writings of such critics came to occupy the cultural space left by academic history's retreat into specialized, archive-bound monographs. Their work challenged the assumptions of the Whig interpretation of English history, and entailed a revision of the traditional relations between "literary history" and "general history". Combining close textual analysis with wide-ranging intellectual history, this volume both revises the standard story of the history of literary criticism and illuminates a central feature of the cultural history of twentieth-century Britain.

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Books by Collini, Stefan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Collini, Stefan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Victorian Thinkers: Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Morris (Past Masters)

Arnold (Past Masters)

Arnold (Past Masters)

Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850-1930

Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850-1930 (Clarendon Paperbacks)

Matthew Arnold: a Critical Portrait (Clarendon Paperbacks)

English Pasts: Essays in History and Culture

English Pasts: Essays in History and Culture

Common Writing: Essays on Literary Culture and Public Debate

The Nostalgic Imagination: History in English Criticism