{"title":"English Men Of Letters 39 Volume Set","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"keats-book-sidney-colvin-9781108034463","title":"Keats","description":"Sir Sidney Colvin (1845–1927) was the obvious choice to write a book on John Keats (1795–1821) for the first series of English Men of Letters. At various times Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, Colvin had a long-standing interest in the poet, publishing an edition of his letters to family and friends in 1891, and later writing a longer biography, published in 1917. This introduction to the poet, which used print and manuscript sources not available to earlier biographers, was first published in 1887. In his preface, Colvin admits that 'I have not attempted to avoid saying over again much that in substance has been said already, and better, by others … I hope to have contributed something of my own towards a fuller understanding both of Keats's art and life'.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51092677296401,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51092680638737,"sku":"NIN9781108034463","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52139339055377,"sku":"NLS9781108034463","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1108034462.jpg?v=1750886965"},{"product_id":"burke-book-john-morley-9781108034746","title":"Burke","description":"This volume on Edmund Burke (1729–97), published in 1879 in the first series of English Men of Letters, was written by the general editor of the series, John Morley (1838–1923). Himself a politician as well as an author, Morley had previously published a 'historical study' of Burke in 1867, but emphasises in an introductory note that this book 'is biographical rather than critical' and is intended as a narrative life. Morley himself was a radical in politics, and his interest in Burke, who he does not hesitate to characterise on occasion as a narrow-minded reactionary, may seem surprising, but he greatly admired his subject's independent political stance, which he describes as a mixture of utilitarian liberalism and historic conservatism, unfettered by abstract doctrine, and which he believed might again come to dominate political discourse in the last decades of the nineteenth century.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51097342869777,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51097346113809,"sku":"NIN9781108034746","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52126731796753,"sku":"NLS9781108034746","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1108034748.jpg?v=1751143706"},{"product_id":"coleridge-book-henry-duff-traill-9781108034449","title":"Coleridge","description":"The publication in 1798 of Lyrical Ballads, written by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), is considered to be the starting point of the Romantic movement. Published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1884, this biography by H. D. Traill (1842–1900), who also wrote on Sterne for the series, sets Coleridge's work within the context of his troubled childhood, his travels, and the depression and financial crises that plagued his life. The first writer to attempt a detailed account of Coleridge's life and work - which ranged from poetry, journalism and literary criticism to history, philosophy and theology - Traill admits to some difficulty in tracing source material, particularly as Coleridge's theological and philosophical writings were largely incomplete, and remained unpublished at his death. 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It is the life of a man endowed with as rare a combination of noble gifts as ever was bestowed on a human intellect And yet it was not only an unhappy life; it was a poor life.' Church, while paying the highest tribute to Bacon's intellectual achievements in so many different fields, argues that 'there was in Bacon's 'self' a deep and fatal flaw. He was a pleaser of men.' He believed that this work should correct the adulatory stance adopted by earlier biographers, and reveal the whole, imperfect man.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51097344246033,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51097347293457,"sku":"NIN9781108034432","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52140297126161,"sku":"NLS9781108034432","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1108034438.jpg?v=1750919569"},{"product_id":"thackeray-book-anthony-trollope-9781108034760","title":"Thackeray","description":"Written by the novelist Anthony Trollope (1815–82), who had been a friend of William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) since 1860, and originally published in 1879 in the first series of English Men of Letters, this book surveys the life and works of the author of Vanity Fair. It remains a useful introductory text about an author who is still popular today, and offers insights into Victorian assumptions about novel writing, as well as providing an account of Thackeray's life and career which benefits from Trollope's personal knowledge of his subject. A prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction, Trollope is best remembered today for his 'social comedy' novels. In this biography, he addresses what he describes as every reader's desire to know not only the works, but the man behind them.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51097344606481,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51097347424529,"sku":"NIN9781108034760","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52139826839825,"sku":"NLS9781108034760","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1108034764.jpg?v=1750751961"},{"product_id":"fielding-book-austin-dobson-9781108034548","title":"Fielding","description":"At the outset of this book, published in the first 'English Men of Letters' series in 1883, the poet and author Austin Dobson (1840–1921) declares his intention to restrict himself to giving a 'purely biographical' account of the life of the lawyer, novelist and dramatist Henry Fielding (1707–54). Fielding is probably best remembered today for his novels Joseph Andrews and The History of Tom Jones (1749), but in his own day he was famous not only for his writings in many different genres but also for his work as an innovatory Justice of the Peace in London. Dobson recounts Fielding's life from his schooldays at Eton to the production of his first play, and his subsequent careers as a writer, magistrate and controversialist, until his death in Portugal (where he had travelled in the hope that the climate would improve his health) in October 1754.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51097348079889,"sku":"NIN9781108034548","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52126737367313,"sku":"NLS9781108034548","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1108034543.jpg?v=1751081156"},{"product_id":"de-quincey-book-david-masson-9781108034593","title":"De Quincey","description":"Combining intellectual enthusiasm with analytical bite, David Masson's biography of the self-confessed opium eater provides readers with valuable insights into an author whose life oscillated between respectability, vagrancy and infamy. Published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1881, only two decades after the death of Thomas de Quincey (1785–1859), and written by a man who, like his subject in his more prosperous years, was a journalist and editor in the heart of literary London, Masson's account describes a man and a nation at the peak of their cultural influence. Covering not only the Confessions, but also his less well known essays in the London Magazine, Blackwood's, the Edinburgh Saturday Post and the Instructor, this literary portrait places the life - debts and drug use, but also fame, success and the friendship of some of the greatest writers of the age - in the context of the works.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51097345720593,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51097349030161,"sku":"NIN9781108034593","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52140275237137,"sku":"NLS9781108034593","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1108034594.jpg?v=1751367006"},{"product_id":"gray-book-edmund-gosse-9781108034517","title":"Gray","description":"Thomas Gray (1716–71) was one of the most influential poets of the eighteenth century, and is probably best remembered today for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. In this biography of Gray, first published in the first 'English Men of Letters' series in 1882, poet and critic Edmund Gosse (1849–1928) delivers a sympathetic account of his subject, offering both a traditional chronological narrative of Gray's life, from his schooldays at Eton, through his travels abroad and his academic career at Cambridge (though he was appointed professor of modern history in 1768, failing health meant that he never delivered any lectures), and an analysis of his poetry. 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