Henry Fielding (1707-54) began his writing career as a playwright and before the age of 30 produced a great number of comedies, farces and burlesques. His wit was already apparent, and his admirers included Swift who particularly enjoyed his Tom Thumb. His Pasquin, A Dramatick Satire on the Times was in part responsible for the ensuing restrictive censorship of plays with the Licensing Act of 1737. Fielding practised at law, wrote essays and poems, ran a few journals - but remains most famous for his novels. He began Joseph Andrews as a parody of the sentimentalism of Richardson's Pamela, and...

Essays on the Alps, the delights of the Alpine rambling, and a young man's expeditions - the piece on Switzerland in winter is perhaps his finest. This is considered to be one of the landmark books of mountaineering literature, and ranks among the best in climbing literature. The book describes 16 of the author's climbs and rambles in the Alps, including chapters on "The Schreckhorn," "The Jungfrau-Joch," and "The Alps In Winter" - a classic of mountain climbing that influenced generations of climbers. Sir Leslie Stephen is one of the most famous personalities in mountaineering, one of the...

This volume was originally published as part of the English Men of Letters series in 1902. This series aimed to bring a critical framework for reading and analysing novels to the large literate audience which had emerged as the result of mass education campaigns in the nineteenth century. Written by eminent scholars and combining biographical details with literary criticism, the English Men of Letters series was extremely successful and occupied a distinctive position in British literary education in the early twentieth century. Written by Victorian scholar and critic Sir Leslie Stephen (1832...

Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge, MP and Postmaster General, Henry Fawcett (1833 84) was a radical supporter of both feminism and class equality. He campaigned for the widening of access to universities and the preservation of public open spaces, and oversaw the development of the telephone network. This biography, first published in 1885, was written by Leslie Stephen (1832 1904), Fawcett's contemporary at Cambridge, who later helped found the Dictionary of National Biography. Although their ideologies diverged later in their careers, Stephen and Fawcett's friendship lasted for...

Leslie Stephen (1832 1904) was a writer, philosopher and literary critic whose work was published widely in the nineteenth century. As a young man Stephen was ordained deacon, but he later became agnostic and much of his work reflects his interest in challenging popular religion. This two-volume work, first published in 1876, is no exception: it focuses on the eighteenth-century deist controversy and its effects, as well as the reactions to what Stephen saw as a revolution in thought. Comprehensive and full of detailed analysis, this is an important work in the history of ideas. Volume 1...