The Scots novelist Margaret Oliphant (1828 97) published this biography of the playwright and poet Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751 1816) in the first 'English Men of Letters' series in 1883. Sheridan is best known for his plays The Rivals, A Trip to Scarborough, and The School for Scandal, which was his most popular work among his contemporaries. Sheridan was also at one point the owner of the famous Theatre Royal on Drury Lane, which he purchased with his father-in-law in 1776. He led a radical political career, becoming a Whig MP in 1780 and quickly developing a reputation as a brilliant...

W. J. Courthope's biography of politician and writer Joseph Addison (1672 1719) was published in 1884 in the first series of English Men of Letters. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, Courthope (1842 1917) was elected fellow of the British Academy in 1907. His scholarly works include a biography and edition of the works of Alexander Pope. This work begins not with an account of Addison's birth and childhood but instead with an essay on 'The State of English Society and Letters after the Restoration', contextualising a writer whose periodical essays were still widely read and enjoyed in the late...

This introduction to the life and works of Francis Bacon (1561 1626) was published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1884. The author, R. W. Church (1815 90), who also wrote on Spenser for this series, begins forcefully: 'The life of Francis Bacon is one which it is a pain to write or to read. It is the life of a man endowed with as rare a combination of noble gifts as ever was bestowed on a human intellect And yet it was not only an unhappy life; it was a poor life.' Church, while paying the highest tribute to Bacon's intellectual achievements in so many different fields,...

The publication in 1798 of Lyrical Ballads, written by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 1834), is considered to be the starting point of the Romantic movement. Published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1884, this biography by H. D. Traill (1842 1900), who also wrote on Sterne for the series, sets Coleridge's work within the context of his troubled childhood, his travels, and the depression and financial crises that plagued his life. The first writer to attempt a detailed account of Coleridge's life and work which ranged from poetry, journalism and literary...

Sir Philip Sidney (1554 86) was an English poet and courtier who is now seen as one of the most influential English writers of the sixteenth century. Born into a politically active family, Sidney is best known for his works Astrophel and Stella, a story in sonnet form which popularised this literary genre in England, and Arcadia, a romance which was the first English vernacular work to be published on the continent. This volume, published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1886 by literary scholar John Addington Symonds (1840 93), provides a concise biography of a fascinating...

This biography of Thomas Carlyle (1795 1881) was published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1892. The author, John Nichol (1833 94), who also wrote on Byron for the series, was an author, poet and critic who was for many years professor of English literature at the University of Glasgow, and who moved in the same intellectual circles as Carlyle, though as he states in his prefatory note, he knew him only slightly. Nichol acknowledges his indebtedness in this work to J. A. Froude, Carlyle's friend, disciple and biographer, but his portrait of the 'master spirit of his time'...

The publication in 1798 of Lyrical Ballads, written by William Wordsworth (1770 1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is considered to have launched the Romantic movement. Published in 1881 in the first series of 'English Men of Letters', this biography of Wordsworth by classical scholar and psychical researcher F. W. H. Myers (1843 1901) shows how Wordsworth's profound imagination and thought characterised and shaped his literary era. He discusses the influence of Wordsworth's upbringing and love for the natural world on works such as The Excursion, and The Prelude, which are said to have...

Sir Leslie Stephen (1832 1904) came from a distinguished family of politicians, jurists and writers, and was the father of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. His literary career began with writing about his great passion, the Alps, and he became a noted author and critic, and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. He was a friend of John Morley (1838 1923), the general editor of English Men of Letters, who commissioned him to write three biographies for the first series, on Swift, Pope and Johnson. Stephen is very interested in the family connections and history of Jonathan...

Published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1882, this biography of Charles Dickens (1812 70) provides a short introduction to the life and works of the most popular author of the Victorian era. Sir Adolphus William Ward (1837 1924), a prominent scholar who taught at the newly founded the University of Manchester and became President of the British Academy, wrote on English literature from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and translated Curtius' History of Greece. His work complements earlier biographies of the writer who styled himself as 'The Inimitable' and whose...

Thomas Gray (1716 71) was one of the most influential poets of the eighteenth century, and is probably best remembered today for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. In this biography of Gray, first published in the first 'English Men of Letters' series in 1882, poet and critic Edmund Gosse (1849 1928) delivers a sympathetic account of his subject, offering both a traditional chronological narrative of Gray's life, from his schooldays at Eton, through his travels abroad and his academic career at Cambridge (though he was appointed professor of modern history in 1768, failing health...