An early advocate of art for art's sake, George Saintsbury became, for the English reader of the 1880s, the interpreter of all French literature, and later, a pioneer in comparative literature and historian of English prosody and prose rhythm. His early years at Oxford shaped his literary attitudes for life. After a decade as a schoolmaster, he was for many years a leading London journalist, then professor of English at the University of Edinburgh. Eighteen more years saw a steady flow of prefaces and essays and a history of the French novel. In "King of Critics" one meets a man of myriad literary tastes who wished to know the whole history of European literature and share it all with readers. He loved equally the purest lyrics of Shelley and the complexity of Donne, the richness of Rabelais, the panorama of Scott and medieval romance, and the profound depths of irony in Swift and Ecclesiastes, and always urged upon the reader the joys of minor writers. "King of Critics" is a fascinating study not only of Saintsbury, but of the literary world of Victorian-Edwardian England. It will appeal to a wide variety of readers, particularly those interested in biography and literary history and criticism.

This is a yearbook sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association which promotes comparative literary studies.

The construction of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as an Anglo-American sage and literary icon was the product of a cult of personality that lay at the center of nineteenth-century cultural politics. A reconstruction of the culture wars fought over Goethe’s authority, a previously hidden chapter in the intellectual history of the period ranging from the late eighteenth century to the threshold of Modernism, is the focus of Literature and the Cult of Personality. Marginal as well as canonical writers and critics figured prominently in this process, and Literature and the Cult of Personality offers insight into the mediation activities of Mary Wollstonecraft, Henry Crabb Robinson, the canonical Romantic poets, Thomas Carlyle, Margaret Fuller, George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and others. For women writers and Jacobins, Scots, and Americans, translating Goethe served as an empowering cultural platform that challenges the myth of the self-sufficiency of British literature. Reviewing and translating German authors provided a means of gaining literary enfranchisement and offered a paradigm of literary development according to which 're-writers' become original writers through an apprenticeship of translation and reviewing. In the diverse and fascinating body of critical writing examined in this book, textual exegesis plays an unexpectedly minor role; in its place, a full-blown cult of personality emerges along with a blueprint for the ideology of hero-worship that is more fully mapped out in the cultural and political life of twentieth-century Europe.

The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address is a state-of-the-art companion to the field that showcases both the historical traditions and the future possibilities for public address scholarship in the twenty-first century. Focuses on public address as both a subject matter and a critical perspective Mindful of the connections between the study of public address and the history of ideas Provides an historical overview of public address research and pedagogy, as well as a reassessment of contemporary public address scholarship by those most engaged in its practice Includes in-depth discussions of basic issues and controversies public address scholarship Explores the relationship between the study of public address and contemporary issues of civic engagement and democratic citizenship Reflects the diversity of views among public address scholars, advancing on-going discussions and debates over the goals and character of rhetorical scholarship