A controversial literary critic and commentator, Joseph Ritson (1752 1803) made his reputation identifying and exposing literary forgeries. His enduring legacy, however, stems from his interest in the legend of Robin Hood. The combination of his passion for collecting literary antiquities, particularly medieval ballad poetry, and his political convictions in support of republican government, drew him to the tale of the English outlaw. This two-volume work, first published in 1795, is an important collection of texts relating to the legend. Ritson's aim was to present all the known poems and...

Wisbech in north Cambridgeshire was a wealthy port in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and was home to bankers, writers and influential social reformers including Thomas Clarkson. Its museum, founded in 1847, contains about six thousand books bequeathed by Chauncy Hare Townshend (1798 1868), a friend of Charles Dickens who shared Dickens' fascination with mesmerism and the occult. His library was typical of 'a gentleman of wealth and great culture' and contained works of fiction in several languages, non-fiction and science, many of which were rare and finely bound. Since 1877 the...

Jonathan Swift (1667 1745) was born in Dublin and studied at the city's Trinity College. He gained his B.A. in 1686 before going to England where he took a Master's degree at Oxford in 1692. Subsequently, Swift lived between England and Ireland for a number of years. He moved from England in 1714 after the Tory party he supported lost power. Back in Ireland as Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, he turned his talents to supporting Irish causes. During this period he wrote some of his best work, including Gulliver's Travels, the satirical masterpiece which has been continuously in print...

Walter Pater (1839 94) was the foremost Victorian writer on art and on aesthetic experience. He brought his extensive knowledge of the history of art to bear on the new problem of how to explain the very personal affective response to beauty, and raised this into a central concern of aesthetic and philosophical thought. His ideas still shape modern assumptions about how art plays on our feelings and intellectual responses. This edition of Pater's complete works was published in 1900 1 in a limited edition of 775 copies. It comprises eight volumes with an additional volume of critical essays...

Walter Pater (1839 94) was the foremost Victorian writer on art and aesthetic experience. He brought his knowledge of the history of art to bear on the new problem of how to explain the very personal affective response to beauty, and raised this into a central concern of aesthetic and philosophical thought. His ideas still shape modern assumptions about our response to art. This edition of Pater's complete works was published in 1900 1 in a limited edition of 775 copies. It comprises eight volumes of his major works with an additional volume of essays first published in The Guardian. This...

John Ruskin (1819 1900), the influential Victorian art critic and social theorist, lived in the Lake District for nearly 30 years. This biographical study, first published in 1901, focuses on the significance of the region in Ruskin's life and art. It begins with his first visit as a five-year-old, when he became ''a dedicated spirit' to the beauty and the wonders of Nature', and ends with accounts of his funeral and memorial at Coniston. It describes his commitment to the local people and their traditional crafts, and his relationship with the poet Wordsworth. The author, H. D. Rawnsley...

Sir Leslie Stephen (1832 1904) was founding Editor of the Dictionary of National Biography (NBD). Also a writer on philosophy, ethics, and literature, he was educated at Eton, King's College, London, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he remained as a Fellow and a tutor for a number of years. Though a sickly child, he later became a keen and successful mountaineer, taking part in first ascents of nine peaks in the Alps. These biographical essays and critiques were written originally for the National Review and published as two two-volume sets in 1898 and 1902. These vignettes show that,...

Highly educated and accustomed to intellectual society, the writer and woman of letters Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741 1821) became a close friend of Samuel Johnson through her first husband, the brewer Henry Thrale. Her second marriage, to the Italian musician Gabriel Mario Piozzi in 1784, estranged her from Johnson, but following his death she published her groundbreaking Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, anticipating Boswell's biography. As well as her letters, poetry, essays, memoirs and travel diaries (several of which are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), she was one of...

Walter Pater (1839 94) was the foremost Victorian writer on art and on aesthetic experience. His ideas still shape modern assumptions about how art plays on our feelings and intellectual responses. This edition of Pater's complete works was published in 1900 1 in a limited edition of 775 copies. It comprises eight volumes with an additional volume of critical essays first published in The Guardian. The Renaissance, first published as Studies in the Renaissance (1873), is Pater's best known work. These essays on Italian art and the wider question of how the Renaissance may be defined had...

Walter Pater (1839 94) was the foremost Victorian writer on art and on aesthetic experience. He brought his extensive knowledge of the history of art to bear on the new problem of how to explain the very personal affective response to beauty, and raised this into a central concern of aesthetic and philosophical thought. His ideas still shape modern assumptions about how art plays on our feelings and intellectual responses. This edition of Pater's complete works was published in 1900 1 in a limited edition of 775 copies. This collection of essays, first published in 1889, was Pater's only...