Since its first publication in February 1897 Herford’s The Age of Wordsworth has remained and continues to remain a basic book on European Romanticism in general and the English Romanticism in particular. The second edition was printed in the same year a few months later, in November 1897, and the third edition (revised) was brought out in the year 1899. Since then the book has been reprinted many times, and that is a standing testimony to the immense popularity and usefulness of the book. In the Preface to the first edition Herford wrote in December 1895, about a year before the actual publication of the book: “The task of presenting this vast and complex literature with some semblance of order and unity has been no light one.†But the enormous popularity of the book for over a century is a glowing testimony to his remarkable success in performing the arduous task he had set upon himself. His analysis of Romanticism, which is the organizing conception of this book is as sharp as it is illuminating and offers a clear idea of the various phases of European Romanticism, a movement that swept over Europe from roughly the middle of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. What deserves special mention is the fact that all along Herford assiduously maintains the distinction between literary history and biography. While the book is indispensable for any student of English literature, the students of the History of Thought and Culture Studies will also find this luminous book delightfully readable and interesting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR C.H. Herford
Charles Harold Herford, Litt.D. (Cent.), Hon. D. Litt. (Vict.), was a distinguished Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Manchester. He made his debut in the critical world with the publication of The Essential Characteristics of the Romantic and Classical Styles with Illustrations from English Literature in 1880. The same year he received the Harness Prize for his essay on the first Quarto Edition of Hamlet, 1603. In 1881 came out “A Sketch of the History of the English Drama in its Social Aspects,†an essay that brought him Le Bas Prize 1880. It was published by Cambridge University Press in 1881. His next important publication was Studies in Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1886). But he shot into real prominence and earned academic recognition for his meticulous scholarship with the publication of The Age of Wordsworth, in 1897. In it he handled the complex issue of the nature of European Roamanticism in general and English Romanticism in particular with detailed critical discussion of individual authors, with such luminous scholarship that a revised edition had to be brought out in 1899. Since then the book has been reprinted umpteen times. But Herford was not just a Romanticism would be evident from the titles of his other publications some of which are: Robert Browning (1903), Goethe (1912), Shakespeare (1912), Shakespeare’s Treatment of Love and Marriage (1921). Then he embarked on a monumental project of eleven volume Ben Jonson: The Man and the Work (1925-1952) along with Percy Simpson, and Herford wrote the First two volumes before he died in 1931.
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