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This volume in the
21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the work of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). Arnold's many facets--as poet, educationalist, literary critic, cultural commentator, and religious controversialist--are represented; and the text is fully annotated.
List of contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Letters to Clough (1847-49)
- Fragment of Chorus of a 'Dejaneira' (? 1847-8)
- From The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (1849)
- Sonnet [Quiet Work]
- Mycerinus
- To a Friend
- The Strayed Reveller
- Shakspeare
- Written in Butler's Sermons
- Written in Emerson's Essays
- To an Independent Preacher
- To a Republican Friend
- Continued
- Religious Isolation
- To my Friends
- To Fausta
- The Hayswater Boat
- The Forsaken Merman
- Resignation
- Letters to Clough and others (1849-52)
- From Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852)
- Empedocles on Etna
- The Lake [Meeting]
- Parting
- Absence
- Destiny
- To Marguerite, in Returning a Volume of the Letters of Ortis [To Marguerite - Continued]
- Human Life
- Despondency
- Self-Deception
- Memorial Verses
- A Summer Night
- The Buried Life
- A Farewell
- Stanzas in Memory of the Author of 'Obermann'
- Lines Written in Kensington Gardens
- The Second Best
- The Youth of Nature
- Letters to Clough and Frances Arnold (1853)
- From Poems. A New Edition (1853)
- Preface
- [Quiet Work]
- Sohrab and Rustum. An Episode
- A Dream
- The Scholar Gipsy
- Letters to Clough (November 1853)
- General Report for the Year 1853 (1854)
- From Poems. Second Edition (1854)
- Preface
- From Fraser's Magazine (April 1855)
- Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse
- From Fraser's Magazine (May 1855)
- Haworth Chuchyard
- Fragment from 'Lucretius' (? 1856-7)
- From Poems. Third Edition (1857)
- To Marguerite. [Isolation-To Marguerite]
- Isolation [To Marguerite-Continued]
- Letter to Mary Arnold (1857)
- On the Modern Element in Literature (1857)
- From Merope (1858)
- Letter K (1858)
- From On Translating Homer (1861)
- From The Popular Education of France (1861)
- Introduction [Democracy]
- From Last Words on Translating Homer (1862)
- General Report for the Year 1863 (1864)
- From A French Eton (1864)
- From Essays in Criticism (1865)
- Preface
- The Function of Criticism at the Present Time
- The Literary Influence of Academies
- From Maurice de Guérin
- From Heinrich Heine
- From Joubert
- From Cornhill Magazine (1966)
- My Countrymen
- From On the Study of Celtic Literature (1867)
- From New Poems (1867)
- Thyrsis
- East London
- West London
- Austerity of Poetry
- Calais Sands
- Dover Beach
- Growing Old
- A Caution to Poets
- Rugby Chapel
- General Report for the Year 1867 (1868)
- From Culture and Anarchy (1869)
- Letter to Mary Arnold (1869)
- From The Pall Mall Gazette (1869)
- From St Paul and Protestantism (1870)
- From Literature and Dogma (1873)
- Our aspiration quits us, not our need (1875)
- From The Nineteenth Century (1879)
- S.S. Lusitania
- From The Poems of Wordsworth (1879)
- Preface
- From The Hundred Greatest Men (1879)
- Poetry: Introduction
- From The English Poets, ed. T.H. Ward (1880)
- General Introduction: On the Study of Poetry
- Thomas Gray
- John Keats
- From The Poetry of Byron (1881)
- From Preface
- From Poems. New and Complete Edition (1881)
- Geist's Grave
- From Irish Essays (1882)
- From The Incompatibles
- From The French Play in London
- From Macmillan's Magazine (1883)
- An Address to the Wordsworth Society
- From Literature and Dogma. Popular Edition (1883)
- Preface to this Edition
- From Discourses in America (1885)
- Literature and Science
- From Poems (1885)
- Poor Matthias
- From The Times, 13 November 1886
- Mr Matthew Arnold and the Westminster Teachers
- From Fortnightly Review (1887)
- Kaiser Dead
About the author
Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature and Massey Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford. His publications include Coleridge and the Uses of Division and Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection, and, co-edited with Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Tennyson Among the Poets (all OUP).
Summary
This volume in the 21st Century Oxford Authors series offers students an authoritative, comprehensive selection of the poetry and prose of Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)--the first of its kind for half a century. The anthology is a fresh presentation of one of the most important and influential writers and thinkers of the Victorian period. Arnold's many facets--as poet, educationalist, literary critic, cultural commentator, and religious controversialist--are represented; and the text is fully annotated, identifying the many authors with whom Arnold engaged, and the contemporary public events to which his work often responds. Many of the themes of Arnold's writing life are still pressing matters today. What is the true nature of education? What are the duties of the State towards its citizens? What are the proper limits to individual freedom within a liberal society? What is the future of religion in an age of increasing secularisation? And, besides these questions, his poetry is one of the greatest and most influential of all bodies of Victorian verse, giving voice to the anxieties of an epoch.
