Age of Wordsworth (1798-1832)

REVIEWS

“It is an admirable little work all the way through and one which the ripest students of the period may read with interest and profit.”—The Guardian.

“A full index and a chronological table add value to the book, which is both handy and accurate as a text-book and readable as a contribution to the literature of criticism. Mr. Herford has thrown light on this period by considering mainly its relation to ‘the far-reaching and many-sided revival of imaginative power commonly known as Romanticism,’ and his work is not only informing but suggestive.”—Manchester Guardian.

“It is an eminently stimulating and penetrative piece of work, and its style throughout is a model of vigorous and incisive English.”—Educational Review.

“The introductory essay on Romanticism in our literature is an admirable piece of work, full of suggestive thought, but Professor Herford is at his best—and a very fine best it is—in his brief summaries of the lives and works of individual writers. His Cobbett, his Lamb, and others that might be instanced, are veritable gems of biographical and critical compression presented with true literary finish. . . . For the student Professor Herford has provided a rich and suggestive collection of facts ; but he has also done something more, for he has presented them in so able a manner and with such literary flavour as to make his history thoroughly readable.”—Literary World.

“The growth of the new impulse of Romanticism, and the manner in which it asserted itself in imaginative literature at the dawn of the present century, is admirably traced in a book which is remarkable for freshness and distinction of style, philosophic grasp of first principles, and critical insight. . . . When we add that the book is also conspicuous for delicacy of literary appreciation and ripe judgment, both of men and movements, we have said enough to show that we consider its claims are unusual.”—Speaker.

“One of the soundest and most suggestive manuals of a memorable period of our literature.”—Glasgow Herald.

“The desiderated text-book of the period 1708 to 1830 A.D. is no longer to seek. More than that, it has been written by the one Englishman most competent to deal with it. Whatever Professor Herford does he does well ; but he has given us nothing at once so good and so helpful as his book.”—University Correspondent.

“”Quite worthy of high literary reputation of its accomplished author.”—Daily News.

“The order and unity of treatment observable throughout these pages is in a great measure due to the basis whereon the writer has wrought, namely, Romanticism, which he has treated in its various phases and from its beginning, in so many distinct spheres of literature, both of prose and verse. He has enriched his work with much that is valuable in the ripest literary judgments of Continental critics, and he has enlarged the limits of criticism by original observations of his own, by comparisons, and by contrasts, as remarkable for their novelty as for the justice of their appraisements.”””—Morning Post.