On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Oct> r, !8S6 The Publishers' Circular 10...

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    T710rty-Nine Years Have Passed Since Thi...

    most 4 . ^^ genuine , * works of history ^ r , classics , ^ * ^

    science , philology , ecclesiasticism , and archaeology . These united libraries amounted to

    over 700 volumes , all of which were produced withthe truest care of earnest scholarship .

    , The production of literature at a cheap price is therefore the great — material indication

    1 of the advance of letters during the past halfcentury . In the social history of the country

    there can be no chapter more striking in its importance .

    If we pass from the subject of publishers who represent the intermediate relations

    between the public and the author , to a brief consideration of the "writers who have been

    or have come before the public during the past fifty years , it is not a little surprising to

    note the number who have shown that they well deserve their niches in the Temple of

    Fame . We say surprising advisedly , hecause it is far from uncommon in these days to hear

    depreciatory estimates of the worth of con- _ temporary literary talent in England ;

    notwithstanding the patent fact that the Victorian age is second only to two others in the history

    of English , thought ; we refer to the Elizabethan and the Augustan ages .

    When the youthful Princess Victoria was called to the throne in 183 ? , the literature of

    England was undergoing a notable change . During the preceding reigns poetry had

    awakened an interest so fervid as to be unexamp ¦* led in any previous JL era . It is now

    difficult to imagine the passionate and universal excitement which greeted the

    appearance of new poems by Byron , Moore , Scott , « 'wd Campbell . Less loud perhapsthut still

    - ¦ - , x . x . , intense in small and devoted circles were the echoes of admiration which arose a , t the advent

    <> f the works of Wordsworth , Southey , Shelley , and Keats . Towards the close of the fourth

    decade of the century this enthusiasm , seems to have been passing away . Prose had then

    supplanted verse . In the branch , of imaginative prose the Waverley Novels had already

    electrified the world . The last of the series—* Count ' Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous CT '

    — was published in 1831 . Unquestionably Scott ' s greatest successor ,

    « 'iud the first in the Yictorian age to gain high distinction in the field of fiction , was Charles

    Sickens , who began to issue the celebrated ' Pickwick Papers' in March 183 Cshortly after

    the publication — - *^»~ — - h ^ v-. ^^ r mj ^^^ ^ m * y *^ of ^ l ^ k dm . the . T r — ^» ^ ^^ ^^ i Sketches ^^ . ^ k _ ^_* r ^^^ ' ^^^ , IM . ^ i ^ ^ ^ fc ^ -h' b y ^^ ^^ V Boz ^>^ f «*» ^^ ^^ . ^^ ' 'lie literary career of Thackeray , who is

    destined to hold the position of the greatest novelist of the periodbegan earlier i ; but his b k

    splendid fame - ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^ was m I ^^ . ^^ ^ B first ^ r ^^^ ^ h ^^ N , V v ^ founded ^ ^^^ 0 ^^ k ^ ' — . ^_ . pi ~~ v « ^^ on *^ ^ " ^ ^ - ^ * . *¦ the « v « i ^ ^^ i ^ k insti ^ r ^^ ' ^^ p » - tution of Punch in 1841 . Marryat opened

    . Jus career in fiction , by publishing ' The Naval

    -- - iii * * . . i '' Officer' in 1829 . In historical and chivalrous : romance the age boasts of suc * h powerful :

    writers as G . P . R . James , Bulwer Lytton , and William Harrison Ainsworth . Wilkie

    Collins came before the public in 1848 as the author of a life of his father ; his earliest

    novel , * Antonina , or the Fall of Rome , ' appeared in 1853 . In the latter year , too ,

    that voluminous writer and brilliant master of fiction JJLKsUXyj-Ll , j Charles V ^ -ILCU-L-LGO Heade J * . \ JX 2 CbKAKD , y gav gOiVC e ? to l / W the UJJLO public ^ UUUV his 111 ( 3

    first notable work 'Peg Woffington . ' Approaching to present times we have only to

    mention the names Anthony Trollope , "William Black , R . D . Blackmore , and George Meredith ,

    as giant exemplars of the art . The greatest lad Charlotte y novelists Bronte of the and present 'Georg age e are Eliot assuredl , who y

    yield to no one in their marvellous conceptions of nature and vivid pictures of life . At an

    earlier period flourished those delightful writers Mrs . Gore and Mrs . Frances Trollope . Happily

    we still have amongst us Mrs . Oliphant , Miss MulockMiss BraddonLouise de la Hame ' ,

    , , and other gifted feminine novelists , who , in widely diversified fashions , have shown with

    what fascination their fertility of fancy could be made manifest by the apt use of the finely

    expressive English tongue . History , during the Victorian period , has ,

    as a study , progressed in a wonderful manner . We are no longer » 4- / satisfied with dry w and dreary

    chronicles , in books intended for general perusal X . . The resources of investigators " — have

    become so ample that attention must now be confined to special epochs or events if any

    strictly valuable results are to be attained . In this , as in other sciences , the specialist must

    prevail ' History . of Sir Europe Archibald 5 published Alison ' in s formidable 1839-1842 ,

    , was the last of our too comprehensive histories . Arnold ' s History of Rome / and Grote ' s '

    History of Greece , ' are works of a very different stamp . Macaulay ' s magnificent fragment shows

    the immense power of intellectual concentration . When the first volumes of his history V appeared -Mm - ¦»•

    in 1848 , they revealed a new focce in the art of portraying the life pictures of the past ,

    and the immediate success of the work forms one of the leading incidents in our recent

    literary annals . Francis Palgrave , the archaeologist and historian , is one of the lights

    of the age ; as also is Thomas Henry Buckle , whose great work , the ' History of

    Civilisation / despite the fact of its not being completedis likely to bo permanent . The

    , important historical works of Thomas Carlyle also belong to our age . Hallam , although he

    lived until 1859 , belongs to a previovis era ; his last great work , the ' Introduction to the ~

    Literature of Europe in the 15 th , 16 th , and

    Oct> R, !8s6 The Publishers' Circular 10...

    Oct > r , ! 8 S 6 The Publishers' Circular 105 3 !

• Citation
  • Publishers’ Circular (1880-1890), Oct. 1, 1886, page 1055, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/pc/issues/tec_01101886/page/5/