The University Press of Virginia edition of "The Letters of
Matthew Arnold, "edited by Cecil Y. Lang, represents the most
comprehensive and assiduously annotated collection of Arnold's
correspondence available. When complete in six volumes, this
edition will include close to four thousand letters, nearly five
times the number in G.W.E. Russell's two-volume compilation of
1895. The letters, at once meaty and delightful, appear with a
consecutiveness rare in such editions, and they contain a great
deal of new information, both personal (sometimes intimate) and
professional. Two new diaries are included, a handful of letters to
Matthew Arnold, and many of his own that will appear in their
entirety here for the first time. Renowned as a poet and critic,
Arnold will be celebrated now as a letter writer. Nowhere else is
Arnold's appreciation of life and literature so extravagantly
evident as in his correspondence. His letters amplify the dark
vision of his own verse, as well as the moral background of his
criticism. As Cecil Lang writes, the letters "may well be the
finest portrait of an age and of a person, representing the main
movements of mind and of events of nearly half a century and at the
same time revealing the intimate life of the participant-observer,
in any collection of letters in the nineteenth century, possibly in
existence."
Volume 2 covers the years of Arnold's emergence as a critic.
During this period, he consolidated his reputation with "Essays in
Criticism, "notably the influential article, "The Function of
Criticism at the Present Time." In 1865, in Europe on an official
school study, he records his impressions with his usual keen
observations of nature within and nature without. His letters to
friends (old and new, at home and abroad), to politicians and
theologians continue to display an unhurried, unfailing intellect.
Writing to his mother and other members of his family, he exhibits
a warm, witty, and always observant devotion to his wife, Flu, and
young son, Tom, who often accompany him on his travels in
England.
General
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