Literature and Philosophy in Nineteenth-Century British Culture

This is the third in a three-volume collection of primary sources which examines philosophy and literature in nineteenth-century Britain. Accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, this collection will be of great interest to students and scholars of British Literature and Philosophy.

1. Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The Science of Deduction', of The Sign of Four (London and Philadelphia, 1890), pp. 13-17


2. Edwin Abbott Abbott, Preface to the 2nd edition of Flatland (London, 1884), pp. 17-22


3. George Eliot, 'How We Come to Give Ourselves False Testimonials, and Believe in Them', of Impressions of Theophrastus Such (London, 1879), pp. 228-33, 236


4. Henry Jones, excerpt from 'A Criticism of Browning's View of the Failure of Knowledge', of Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher (London & New York, 1896), pp. 220-22, 224, 226-28


5. William James, excerpt from 'The Psychology of Belief', Mind 19.55 (Jul. 1889), pp. 325-31.


6. Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection', The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Robert Bridges (London: Humphrey Milford, 1918 [written 1889]), pp. 68.


7. Mary Augusta Ward, excerpt from Robert Elsmere (London, 1888), pp. 338-43.


8. Constance Naden, 'The Roman Philosopher to Christian Priests' in Songs and Sonnets of Springtime (London, 1881), pp. 16-18


9. James Thomson, 'Philosophy' in The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems (London, 1880), pp. 134-37


10. Anon., excerpt from 'Modern Pessimism', Quarterly Review 196.392 (1902), pp. 625-29, 636-40, 644-45
Part 2. Self


11. Robert Louis Stevenson, excerpt from 'Markheim' in Henry Norman (ed.), The Broken Shaft: Tales of Mid-Ocean (New York, 1886), 52-7, 60-1, 65-6, 68-78


12. George Henry Lewes, 'Consciousness and Unconsciousness', Mind 2.6 (Apr. 1877), pp. 156-61, 163-66


13. May Sinclair, excerpt from 'Guyon: A Philosophical Dialogue', in Essays in Verse (London, 1891), pp. 16-23


14. Francis Herbert Bradley, excerpt from 'The Meanings of Self', of Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay (London, 1893), pp. 75-86


15. Mathilde Blind, section III and VI, 'Chaunts of Life' in The Ascent of Man (London, 1889), pp. 164-69, 182-87


16. Samuel Butler, 'Thought and Language', 1890 lecture, collected in R.A. Streatfeild (ed.) Essays on Life, Art and Science (London, 1908), pp. 176-78, 184-85, 187-92, 206-08, 225-28


17. Edwin Arnold, 'Buddha Under the Bodhi Tree', from book 6 of The Light of Asia (Chicago, 1879), pp. 155-73


18. Oscar Wilde (attr.), 'The Magnet's Story', reported in Richard Le Gallienne's The Romantic Nineties (Garden City, N.Y., 1925), pp. 254-56


19. Thomas Hardy, 'Fore scene: The Overworld', in The Dynasts (London, 1903).


20. Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, 'The Dreams of the Prophet', in Time and the Gods (London, 1906), pp. 118-22
Part 3. Art and Criticism


21. William Morris, excerpt from 'The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation', 1881 lecture collected in Hopes and Fears for Art (London, 1882), pp. 190-92, 205-11


22. George Meredith, excerpt from 'On the Idea of Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit', The New Quarterly Magazine 8 (Jan. 1877), pp. 1-2, 8-9, 30, 32-33


23. Vernon Lee, excerpt from 'On Literary Construction', in The Handling of Words; And Other Studies in Literary Psychology (London: John Lane, 1922 [1886]), pp. 1, 22-29


24. Algernon Charles Swinburne, excerpt from 'Victor Hugo: L'Année Terrible', in Essays and Studies (London: Chatto and Windus, 1875 [1872]), pp. 41-45


25. Edward Dowden, excerpt from 'The Interpretation of Literature', Transcripts and Studies (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1896 [1886]), pp. 238-39, 251-52, 254, 265-68.


26. Ella D'Arcy (as 'G.H. Page'), 'Personality in Art', Westminster Review 139.1 (Jan. 1893): 646-53.


27. Andrew Cecil Bradley, excerpt from 'Poetry for Poetry's Sake', 1901 lecture collected in Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London, 1909), pp. 7-17


28. James Sully, excerpt from 'George Eliot's Art', Mind 6.23 (Jul. 1881), 380-85, 390-91


29. Edward Caird, extract from 'Goethe and Philosophy', Essays on Literature and Philosophy (Glasgow: J. Maclehose & sons, 1892 [1886]), pp. 54-55, 58-60, 62-63


30. Havelock Ellis, extract from 'Casanova', in Affirmations (London, 1898), pp. 112-18
Part 4. Society


31. Leslie Stephen, excerpt from 'The Moral Element in Literature', Cornhill Magazine 43 (Jan. 1881): 34-9, 49-50


32. Frederick Denison Maurice, excerpt from 'Social Morality', in Social Morality: Twenty-One Lectures (London, 1872), pp. 7-11


33. Julia Wedgwood, excerpt from 'Ethics and Literature', Contemporary Review 71 (Jan. 1897), pp. 77-80


34. William Hurrell Mallock, excerpt from The New Republic (London, 1877), pp. 213-22


35. Walter Pater, excerpt from 'New Cirenaicism', of Marius the Epicurean: His Sensations and Ideas (London, 1885), pp. 143-48, 150-53


36. Grant Allen, excerpt from 'The New Hedonism', Fortnightly Review 55.327 (Mar. 1894), 379-83, 389-92


37. Amy Levy, 'Xantippe' in Xantippe, and Other Verse (London, 1881), pp. 1-13


38. Lewis Carroll, excerpt from Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (London, 1893), pp. 181-87


39. John Addington Symonds, 'Literature - Idealistic', of A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion (London, 1896), pp. 115-20, 122-25


40. Herbert George Wells, excerpt from 'Concerning Freedoms', of A Modern Utopia (London, 1905), pp. 31-4, 37-42