Literary Criticism, Volume 1

Leslie Stephen was best known to his contemporaries as a literary critic. Essays on literature and literary figures dominate his two best-known series of books, Hours in a Library and Studies of a Biographer. But in an array of essays on general literary topics, most of which have remained uncollected until this volume, Stephen discusses the broad outlines of his view of the art and craft of literature. He addresses the notion that authors write too much; the purpose of criticism; the relation between art and morality; and such topics as humor, autobiography, and the interrelation of science and romance. In these bracing essays, Stephen brings his characteristic clarity of thought, pungency of expression, and keen insight into literature from both an aesthetic and sociopolitical perspective. The result is a series of essays written over more than thirty years that vividly capture the state of literature and criticism in the waning years of the Victorian age in England.