English Men of Letters 39 Volume Set

by John Morley (Editor)

In the 1870s, the publishing house of Macmillan began to issue a series of books called English Men of Letters – biographies of English writers by other English writers. The general editor of the series was the journalist, critic, politician, and supporter (and later biographer) of Gladstone, John Morley (1838–1923), and its aim was that the books should be a short introduction to the subject and his works, but also that the life should illuminate the works, and vice versa. The subjects range chronologically from Chaucer to Thackeray and Dickens, and one of the great interests of the series is that many of the authors were discussing writers of the previous generation, and some had even known their subjects personally. The series demonstrates an approach to literary biography and criticism at the end of the nineteenth century, and also reveals which authors were at that time regarded as canonical.

8052 pages, Paperback

First published December 9, 2009

About the author

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn OM, PC was an English Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor. Initially a journalist, he was elected a Member of Parliament in 1883. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1886 and between 1892 and 1895, Secretary of State for India between 1905 and 1910 and again in 1911 and Lord President of the Council between 1910 and 1914. Morley was a distinguished political commentator, and biographer of his hero, William Gladstone. Morley is best known for his writings and for his "reputation as the last of the great nineteenth-century Liberals". He opposed imperialism, the Boer War, and British entry into the First World War in 1914.

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