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This series provides a high-quality selection of early printings of literary works, textual editions, anthologies and literary criticism which are of lasting scholarly interest. Ranging from Old English to Shakespeare to early twentieth-century work from around the world, these books offer a valuable resource for scholars in reception history, textual editing and literary studies.

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451 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies

Page 1 of 23

Memoirs of William Wordsworth
  • Volume 1
  • Christopher Wordsworth
  • Published online:
    05 June 2016
    Print publication:
    25 September 2014
    First published in:
    1851
  • This two-volume biography of William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was published in 1851 by his nephew, Christopher (1807–85), a scholar who later became bishop of Lincoln. The introductory chapter argues against the presentation of a 'life', or a critical assessment of Wordsworth's works. The poet felt strongly that the life was in the works, and that they should 'plead their own cause before the tribune of Posterity'. Nevertheless, an elucidation of the facts of Wordsworth's life would - precisely because his poems are so personal - help the reader to understand his verse; and to be best understood, it should be studied chronologically, for which a 'biographical commentary' would be essential. Christopher Wordsworth, having agreed to undertake this task, asked his uncle for a 'brief sketch of the most prominent circumstances of his life'; the remainder of Volume 1 takes the biography up to 1810.

Memoirs of William Wordsworth
  • Volume 2
  • Christopher Wordsworth
  • Published online:
    05 June 2016
    Print publication:
    25 September 2014
    First published in:
    1851
  • This two-volume biography of William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was published in 1851 by his nephew, Christopher (1807–85), a scholar who later became bishop of Lincoln. The introductory chapter argues against the presentation of a 'life', or a critical assessment of Wordsworth's works. The poet felt strongly that the life was in the works, and that they should 'plead their own cause before the tribune of Posterity'. Nevertheless, an elucidation of the facts of Wordsworth's life would - precisely because his poems are so personal - help the reader to understand his verse; and to be best understood, it should be studied chronologically, for which a 'biographical commentary' would be essential. Christopher Wordsworth, having agreed to undertake this task, describes in Volume 2 the family's move to Rydal Mount in 1811, and continues to 1850. An appendix provides documents on the history of the family.

The Letters of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu
  • With Some of the Letters of her Correspondents
  • Volume 4, Containing her Letters from the Age of Twenty-Three to Forty
  • Elizabeth Montagu
  • Edited by Matthew Montagu
  • Published online:
    05 June 2016
    Print publication:
    26 March 2015
    First published in:
    1813
  • This four-volume edition of the letters of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800), the 'Queen of the Bluestockings', was edited by her nephew and adopted son Matthew (1762–1831) and published in 1809–13. The daughter of wealthy parents, and well educated in history and languages, at the age of twenty-one she married Edward Montagu, a grandson of the earl of Sandwich whose income derived from northern estates and coal mines, and began to establish a London salon attended by the intellectual cream of British society, including Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Hannah More and Hester Chapone. The letters (and some correspondence from her circle) are arranged chronologically. Volume 4 covers the period from 1755 to 1761, and Montagu's correspondents include her sister and Mrs Elizabeth Carter, another member of the Bluestocking circle. The selection ends with her description of the coronation of George III in September 1761.

The Table-Talk of John Selden
  • With a Biographical Preface and Notes
  • John Selden
  • Published online:
    05 June 2016
    Print publication:
    12 November 2015
  • The lawyer, politician and antiquarian John Selden (1584–1654) made his name as an expert on the ancient laws of England, though he was equally at home with classical and Judaic studies: Grotius described him as 'the glory of the English nation', and his advice was sought on all manner of legal and moral problems from tithes to cross-dressing. This collection of his remarks on many topics was compiled by his amanuensis Richard Milward and first published in 1689. Reissued here is a version annotated and with a biographical preface by the literary scholar Samuel Weller Singer (1783–1858) and published in 1847. The topics of Selden's discourse are arranged alphabetically, from 'abbies' to 'zelots', via Christmas, juggling, marriage, and witches. As Singer says of the book, 'it is impossible to open it without finding some important fact or discussion, something practically useful and applicable to the business of life'.

A Jane Austen Dictionary
  • George Latimer Apperson
  • Published online:
    05 June 2016
    Print publication:
    30 April 2015
    First published in:
    1932
  • The novels of Jane Austen (1775–1817) are of remarkable and enduring appeal; popular the world over, they are celebrated for their wit and social observation. This 1932 publication was compiled by George Latimer Apperson (1857–1937), an inspector of schools, editor of The Antiquary from 1899 to 1915, and major contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary. His stated intention for this work was to 'include in one alphabet, the name of every person, place, book and author named in Jane Austen's novels, fragments and juvenilia'. He also extends his coverage to biographical detail, drawing on the landmark study Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters (1913). The dictionary was published at a time when Jane Austen scholarship and literary criticism had developed significantly, reflecting the continued public interest in her novels. It remains an indispensable reference tool for all admirers of her work.

Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart
  • Volume 1
  • John Gibson Lockhart
  • Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    15 November 2012
    First published in:
    1837
  • As son-in-law and literary executor to Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) was uniquely placed to produce a definitive biography of the great poet and novelist. First published in 1837–8, shortly after Scott's death, this celebrated seven-volume work is based on personal memories, correspondence, and Scott's own autobiographical sketches. Wide-ranging in his purview, Lockhart is also detailed in his descriptions: the Aberdeen Journal of the day observed that the volumes trace Scott's life and literary efforts with 'the most minute distinctness'. Volume 1 opens with Scott's brief autobiography, written in 1808 and revised in 1825. Lockhart's biography proper opens with Scott's birth in 1771, provides an account of his education, and concludes here with his first contributions to the Edinburgh Review in 1804.

Curiosities of Street Literature
  • Comprising 'Cocks,' or 'Catchpennies'
  • Compiled by Charles Hindley
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    08 December 2011
    First published in:
    1871
  • Broadsheet papers were a popular forerunner of the tabloid newspaper, providing sensational descriptions of current events, especially violent crimes, executions and political scandal. Illustrated with satirical cartoons and often recounting stories in verse, the legacy of broadsheets can be seen in later publications such as Private Eye. This book, first published in 1871 by Charles Hindley (d. 1893), is a collection of notable and popular extracts from broadsheets, such as those produced by James Catnach. Although a wide variety of subjects were covered, including natural disasters, elopements, Parliamentary business and royal events, broadsheets were at their most profitable and lurid when reporting crime stories. Included in this text are accounts of famous cases such as Burke and Hare, child-killer Constance Kent and the Red Barn Murder. The book is an invaluable resource for social historians and provides fascinating insights into the Victorian media and the origins of today's mass media.

Letters and Journals of Lord Byron
  • With Notices of his Life
  • Volume 2
  • George Gordon Byron
  • Edited by Thomas Moore
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    28 March 2012
    First published in:
    1830
  • George Gordon Noel Byron, 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale (1788–1824) is one of the central writers of British Romanticism and his 'Byronic' hero - the charming, dashing, rebellious outsider - remains a literary archetype. But to what extent is this character a portrayal of the author himself? Byron was known for his extremely unconventional, eccentric character and his extravagant and flamboyant lifestyle: Lady Caroline Lamb, one of his lovers, famously described him as 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'. This two-volume work, compiled by his friend Thomas Moore, to whom Byron had given his manuscript memoirs (which he later burnt), was published in 1830. Volume 2 gives an account of Byron's life and work from 1816, including his travels abroad in Switzerland and Italy, where close friendships with Lady Blessington and Percy and Mary Shelley developed, to his early death in the Greek War of Independence in 1824.

George Eliot’s Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals
  • Volume 1, Unknown
  • George Eliot
  • Edited by John Walter Cross
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    28 October 2010
    First published in:
    1885
  • Best known for his brief marriage to George Eliot, John Cross (1840–1924) compiled this three-volume 'autobiography' of 1885 from his late wife's journals and letters. Eliot was never married to her long-term partner G. H. Lewes, and she courted further scandal when she married Cross, twenty years her junior, in 1880. While these volumes offer a valuable insight into Eliot's private reflections, what is perhaps most telling is the material left out or rewritten in Cross' efforts to lend his wife's unconventional life some respectability, which he does at the expense of what one reviewer described as Eliot's 'salt and spice'. George Eliot's Life will be of particular interest to scholars of nineteenth-century biography and literature. Volume 1 covers Eliot's life from 1819 to 1857, beginning with a brief sketch of her childhood and continuing with her move to Coventry, then to London, and travels to Geneva.

The Serialisation of Great Expectations
  • From 'All the Year Round' (December 1860–August 1861)
  • Charles Dickens
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    08 November 2011
    First published in:
    1860
  • The novels of Charles Dickens (1812–70), with their inimitable energy and their comic, tragic and grotesque characters, are still widely read, and reworked for film and television. Great Expectations was (like most of Dickens' works) first published in serial form, in his periodical All the Year Round, shortly before the first book edition of 1861. The serial version is now reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection simultaneously with the three-volume book edition and a volume of newly photographed actual-size colour images of the entire original manuscript. Dickens himself had the manuscript bound and presented to his friend Chauncy Hare Townshend, with whom he shared an interest in mesmerism and the occult, and in 1868 Townshend bequeathed his library (including the manuscript) to the Wisbech and Fenland Museum. Dickens scholars and enthusiasts will now be able easily to study the two-column serialisation alongside the work-in-progress and the first book edition.

Notes and Emendations to the Text of Shakespeare's Plays
  • The Textual Controversy
  • John Payne Collier, Nicholas Esterhazy Stephen Armytage Hamilton, Thomas Duffus Hardy
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    06 May 2013
    First published in:
    1852
  • The editor and forger John Payne Collier (1789–1883) claimed to have discovered a Second Folio of Shakespeare which had been 'corrected' in a mid-seventeenth-century hand. He published this catalogue of the emendations, including his commentary on them, in 1852. Collier then presented the so-called 'Perkins Folio' to the Duke of Devonshire, whose successor allowed it to be loaned in 1859 to the British Museum, where a thorough examination exposed it as a forgery. A storm of controversy followed and three of the key documents in the debate, all published in 1860, are also reissued here: 'An Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. J. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspere Folio, 1632' by Nicholas Hamilton (d.1915), assistant keeper of manuscripts at the British Museum; Collier's attempt to refute Hamilton's findings; and 'A Review of the Present State of the Shakespearian Controversy' by Thomas Duffus Hardy (1804–78).

Letters to Gilbert White of Selborne
  • From his Intimate Friend and Contemporary the Rev. John Mulso
  • John Mulso
  • Edited by Rashleigh Holt-White
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    20 October 2011
    First published in:
    1907
  • These letters to Gilbert White (1720–93), the author of The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789; also reissued in this series) were published in 1907. They were written between 1744 and 1790 by John Mulso (1721–91); brother of the bluestocking Mrs Chapone, to White, whom he had met when both were undergraduates at Oxford. White's letters to Mulso were unfortunately destroyed, frustrating plans to publish a 'most interesting and amusing series of letters' between intimate friends, but the remaining half of the correspondence, 'containing almost the only contemporary illustration of Gilbert White's character and career', and then in the possession of the earl of Stamford, was edited by Rashleigh Holt-White, a great-great-nephew and enthusiast of his ancestor's life. These fascinating letters give insights into not only White's character but also the lives of the gentry of the period, and the intellectual milieu in which both men moved.

The Life and Times of James Catnach, (Late of Seven Dials), Ballad Monger
  • Charles Hindley
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    24 November 2011
    First published in:
    1878
  • James Catnach (1792–1841) became famous for publishing satirical ballads and sensational accounts of famous murders in his daily broadsheets, first printed in his own home in Seven Dials, London. Capitalising on the turbulent times, Catnach grew rich on producing lurid descriptions of crimes and the trials and executions that followed them. His imagination occasionally over-stepped the mark; he was once jailed for libel after claiming that a local butcher made his sausages from human flesh. This sympathetic and entertaining biography of Catnach, first published in 1878 by London raconteur Charles Hindley (d. 1893), describes Catnach's rise to prominence and features numerous reproductions of his ballads and stories. It is a fascinating tale encompassing the development of early forms of mass media and the wider political and social currents of the time, and provides invaluable insights into popular culture in nineteenth-century London.

The Manuscript of Great Expectations
  • From the Townshend Collection, Wisbech
  • Charles Dickens
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    08 December 2011
  • The novels of Charles Dickens (1812–70), with their inimitable energy and their comic, tragic and grotesque characters, are still widely read, and reworked for film and television. Dickens himself had the original manuscripts of his works bound and presented them to his friends. That of Great Expectations was given to Chauncy Hare Townshend, with whom Dickens shared an interest in mesmerism and the occult. Townshend bequeathed his library (including the manuscript), together with collections of paintings and objects, to the Wisbech and Fenland Museum in 1868. The manuscript has been newly photographed and is here reproduced in colour and at actual size. The Cambridge Library Collection is also reissuing the serialised version of Great Expectations (1860–1) and the first book edition (1861, in three volumes). Dickens scholars and enthusiasts can now study the work-in-progress, with all its deletions and revisions, alongside the first two published versions.

Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry
  • Together with a Book of Huswifery
  • Thomas Tusser
  • Edited by William Fordyce Mavor
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013
  • A singer and poet as well as a farmer, Thomas Tusser (c.1524–80) first produced his verse manual on farming in the mid-sixteenth century. Since then, it has gone through more than a dozen editions. This 1812 version is a collation of three of the poem's early editions. Editor William Mavor (1758–1837) provides a biographical sketch of Tusser, modernises the work's orthography and punctuation, and includes page-by-page annotations on subject matter and difficult points of language. The work divides into two: the first half, structured around the farming calendar, deals with the cultivation of open and enclosed land, while the second contains 'points of huswifery', arranged loosely around the working day. Tusser writes from the perspective of a tenant farmer, notably placing emphasis on the often overlooked benefits of land enclosure as well as on the role of women in farm labour.

George Eliot’s Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals
  • Volume 3, Sunset
  • George Eliot
  • Edited by John Walter Cross
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    28 October 2010
    First published in:
    1885
  • Best known for his brief marriage to George Eliot, John Walter Cross (1840-1924) compiled this three-volume 'autobiography' of 1885 from his late wife's journals and letters. Eliot was never married to her long-term partner G. H. Lewes, and she courted further scandal when she married Cross, twenty years her junior, in the spring of 1880. While these volumes offer a valuable insight into Eliot's private reflections, what is perhaps most telling is the material left out or rewritten in Cross' efforts to lend his wife's unconventional life some respectability, which he does at the expense of what one reviewer described as Eliot's 'salt and spice'. George Eliot's Life will be of particular interest to scholars of nineteenth-century biography and literature. Volume 3 focuses on Eliot's final years, including her later literary success, travels in Spain, the death of G. H. Lewes, and her marriage to Cross.

A Glossary
  • Or, Collection of Words, Phrases, Names and Allusions to Customs, Proverbs, etc. Which Have Been Thought to Require Illustration, in the Works of English Authors
  • Robert Nares
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    24 November 2011
    First published in:
    1822
  • Originally published in 1822, Robert Nares' glossary of antiquated Elizabethan terms is the result of a personal interest in and love of Elizabethan literature. Nares (1753–1829), well known as a scholar and clergyman, was also a keen philologist and antiquary. This glossary was undertaken in his spare time, and compiled over forty years as he was often occupied with various academic and clerical duties, including founding the British Critic and editing it for twenty years (1793–1813), and becoming Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum (1799–1807). It has long been a useful guide for the 'average reader' (in his own words), as its several reprintings during the nineteenth century demonstrate. His love of the English language was reflected in his previous work, Elements of Orthoepy (1784), which concerned itself with ascertaining correct pronunciation from Shakespeare's time onwards and exploring contemporary variations in the language.

Portraits of Shakespeare, and On the Sonnets of Shakespeare
  • James Boaden, Abraham Wivell
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    27 June 2013
  • From his funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon to the engraving by Droeshout in the First Folio, the depictions of William Shakespeare (1564–1616) have long been the subject of scrutiny. Equally, the mystery surrounding the identity of 'W. H.', the dedicatee of Shakespeare's sonnets, continues to capture the imagination. This volume brings together three works that were originally published separately: two pieces on the portraits and one on the sonnets. A playwright turned theatrical biographer, James Boaden (1762–1839) cultivated a lifelong interest in Shakespeare. His illustrated 1824 analysis of the portraits examines the evidence concerning their authenticity. This is followed by an 1827 investigation by the portrait painter Abraham Wivell (1786–1849), who engages critically with Boaden's findings and those of others. Finally, Boaden's 1837 essay on the sonnets presents the case for naming William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, as their dedicatee - a claim taken up by many later scholars.

The Times on the American War
  • And Other Essays
  • Leslie Stephen
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    28 June 2012
    First published in:
    1865
  • The biographer and writer on philosophy, ethics and literature Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) was educated at Eton, King's College, London, and then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained as a fellow and a tutor for his entire career. He served as the first editor (1885–91) of the Dictionary of National Biography and in 1871 he became editor of the Cornhill Magazine. In this short piece, published in 1865, Stephen takes issue with the portrayal of the American Civil War (1861–5) by The Times. Having travelled to the United States himself in 1863, Stephen argues that the newspaper's depiction of the events in America is inaccurate, and both misinforms the public in Britain and damages Britain's reputation abroad. Also included in this reissue is a short article on the poet John Byrom (1692–1763), and an obituary of Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), Stephen's personal friend.

Memoirs of John Dryden
  • Walter Scott
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    26 September 2013
    First published in:
    1826
  • Upon the restoration of Charles II, theatre burst back into popularity across the stages of England. For the first time since the rise of Cromwell, it was possible to make a living from writing verse, and the theatres attracted poets in their dozens. One of them was the young John Dryden (1631–1700). In this sprightly 1826 biography, reissued here in one volume, Walter Scott (1771–1832) brings Dryden's work, philosophy and historical context vividly to life. He begins with Dryden's literary origins in the Restoration theatre, exploring the flops and then the successes that earned the poet his laurels, and continues with a detailed analysis of his later work, including the unstaged opera The State of Innocence as well as Mac Flecknoe, the cornerstone of Restoration satire. A lively critic, Scott is unafraid to write off Anglo-Saxon poetry, insult grammarians and illuminate Dryden's less admirable qualities.

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