In Nineteenth-Century Lives, first published in 1989, ten distinguished critics and biographers consider what it means to narrate a life. Their illustrative texts are largely taken from nineteenth-century biography, autobiography and the novel, but narrative is the broader genre that unites their various inquiries. The principal issues, theoretical and practical, are framed by Margaret Atwood, J. Hillis Miller and Phyllis Rose. 'The biographer, like the novelist, is a constructor of narratives; it's just that the ground rules are a little different,' writes Atwood. Among the matters they debate are the boundaries of fact and fiction, the professed power of the narrator, and the figurative underpinings of autobiography. But many of these essays are delightful and provocative biographical and autobiographical excursions in themselves. Atwood describes her early fear of biography, Morton Cohen narrates an exciting bit of detective work into the life of Lewis Carroll, and John Rosenberg gives a vivid and frequently revisionary reading of many aspects of Darwin's life.

In The Ethics of Romanticism Laurence Lockridge vigorously revives ethical criticism and at the same time brings to light the Romantics' profound engagement with ethical questions. He argues that a will to value is the pervasive motive of Romantic writers from Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and De Quincey to Shelley, Hazlitt, Keats and Byron. They articulate a compelling ethics that has had a significant influence on modern thought. Yet its character has never before been systematically explored within the larger contexts of European thought. Lockridge argues that a focus on the ethical dimension of literature is the single most powerful strategy for structuring a writer's work as a whole, and that it can even prove congenial. He gives original, interrelated readings of the eight major British Romantic writers. In discussing the place of ethical criticism in modern letters, he qualifies or refutes opposing views - conservative, Marxist, and deconstructive. His book gives strong evidence of one direction criticism might fruitfully take in future years.

In this unique collection of essays, ten distinguished critics and biographers consider what it means to narrate a life. Their illustrative texts are largely taken from nineteenth-century biography, autobiography, and the novel, but narrative is the broader genre that unites their various inquiries. The principal issues are framed by Margaret Atwood, J. Hillis Miller, and Phyllis Rose. Atwood compares and contrasts the biographer and the novelist as creators of narratives, emphasizing that the difference is in the "ground rules." Determining what these ground rules are is a recurring theme in these essays. Some of the subjects discussed are the boundaries of fact and fiction, the professed power of the narrator, and the figurative underpinnings of autobiography. Many of these pieces are delightful and provocative biographical and autobiographical excursions in themselves. Atwood describes her early fear of biography, Morton Cohen narrates an exciting bit of detective work he conducted into the life of Lewis Carroll, and John Rosenberg gives a vivid and frequently revisionary reading of many aspects of Darwin's life. Other critics--Carl Woodring, Richard Altick, Norman Kelvin, Margaret Stetz and Robert Kiely--consider related topics. The contributors, as well as the editors, have all been colleagues or students of the eminent critic and biographer, Jerome Hamilton Buckley, in whose honor these essays have been written.

In The Ethics of Romanticism Laurence Lockridge vigorously revives ethical criticism and at the same time brings to light the Romantics' profound engagement with ethical questions. He argues that a will to value is the pervasive motive of Romantic writers from Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge and De Quincey to Shelley, Hazlitt, Keats and Byron. They articulate a compelling ethics that has had a significant influence on modern thought. Yet its character has never before been systematically explored within the larger contexts of European thought. Lockridge argues that a focus on the ethical dimension of literature is the single most powerful strategy for structuring a writer's work as a whole, and that it can even prove congenial. He gives original, interrelated readings of the eight major British Romantic writers. In discussing the place of ethical criticism in modern letters, he qualifies or refutes opposing views - conservative, Marxist, and deconstructive. His book gives strong evidence of one direction criticism might fruitfully take in future years.