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George Saintsbury
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George Saintsbury
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, FBA (23 October 1845 – 28 January 1933), an English critic, literary historian, editor, teacher, and wine connoisseur, gained a reputation as a highly influential literary critic of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
Born in Lottery Hall, Southampton, he was educated at King's College School, London, and at Merton College, Oxford, where he achieved a first class BA degree in Classical Mods, (1865), and a second class in literae humaniores (1867).
He left Oxford in 1868 having failed to obtain a fellowship, and briefly became a master at the Manchester Grammar School, before spending six years in Guernsey as senior classical master of Elizabeth College, where he began his literary career by submitting his first reviews to The Academy. From 1874 until he returned to London in 1876, he was headmaster of the Elgin Educational Institute, with a brief period in 1877 on The Manchester Guardian.[citation needed]
From the early 1880s, until 1894 he worked as a writer and subeditor for the Saturday Review. Some of the critical essays contributed to the literary journals were afterwards collected in his Essays in English Literature, Essays on French Novelists (1891), Miscellaneous Essays (1892), and Corrected Impressions (1895).
In 1895, Saintsbury became professor of rhetoric and English literature at the University of Edinburgh, a position he held until 1915. During his time in Edinburgh, he was a member of the Scottish Arts Club.
In his retirement, he continued to write, while living at 1A Royal Crescent, Bath, Somerset. He died there in 1933, at the age of 87.
His first book, A Primer of French Literature (1880), and his Short History of French Literature (1882), were followed by a series of editions of French classics and of books and articles on the history of French literature, which made him the most prominent English authority on the subject. His studies in English literature were no less comprehensive, and included the valuable revision of Sir Walter Scott's edition of John Dryden's Works (Edinburgh, 18 vols., 1882–1893), Dryden (1881) in the "English Men of Letters" series, History of Elizabethan Literature (1887), History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1896), A Short History of English Literature (1898, 3rd ed. 1903 – and a book that continued to be reprinted at least into the 1960s), a three-volume edition of the Minor Poets of the Caroline Period (1905, 1906, 1921), a collection of rare poems of great value, and editions of English classics. He coined the term "Janeite" for a fan of Jane Austen in his introduction to an 1894 edition of Pride and Prejudice.[citation needed]
He wrote numerous articles on literary subjects (including Pierre Corneille, Daniel Defoe, Clément Marot, Michel de Montaigne, Jean Racine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire) for the ninth edition (1875–89) of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
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George Saintsbury
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, FBA (23 October 1845 – 28 January 1933), an English critic, literary historian, editor, teacher, and wine connoisseur, gained a reputation as a highly influential literary critic of the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
Born in Lottery Hall, Southampton, he was educated at King's College School, London, and at Merton College, Oxford, where he achieved a first class BA degree in Classical Mods, (1865), and a second class in literae humaniores (1867).
He left Oxford in 1868 having failed to obtain a fellowship, and briefly became a master at the Manchester Grammar School, before spending six years in Guernsey as senior classical master of Elizabeth College, where he began his literary career by submitting his first reviews to The Academy. From 1874 until he returned to London in 1876, he was headmaster of the Elgin Educational Institute, with a brief period in 1877 on The Manchester Guardian.[citation needed]
From the early 1880s, until 1894 he worked as a writer and subeditor for the Saturday Review. Some of the critical essays contributed to the literary journals were afterwards collected in his Essays in English Literature, Essays on French Novelists (1891), Miscellaneous Essays (1892), and Corrected Impressions (1895).
In 1895, Saintsbury became professor of rhetoric and English literature at the University of Edinburgh, a position he held until 1915. During his time in Edinburgh, he was a member of the Scottish Arts Club.
In his retirement, he continued to write, while living at 1A Royal Crescent, Bath, Somerset. He died there in 1933, at the age of 87.
His first book, A Primer of French Literature (1880), and his Short History of French Literature (1882), were followed by a series of editions of French classics and of books and articles on the history of French literature, which made him the most prominent English authority on the subject. His studies in English literature were no less comprehensive, and included the valuable revision of Sir Walter Scott's edition of John Dryden's Works (Edinburgh, 18 vols., 1882–1893), Dryden (1881) in the "English Men of Letters" series, History of Elizabethan Literature (1887), History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1896), A Short History of English Literature (1898, 3rd ed. 1903 – and a book that continued to be reprinted at least into the 1960s), a three-volume edition of the Minor Poets of the Caroline Period (1905, 1906, 1921), a collection of rare poems of great value, and editions of English classics. He coined the term "Janeite" for a fan of Jane Austen in his introduction to an 1894 edition of Pride and Prejudice.[citation needed]
He wrote numerous articles on literary subjects (including Pierre Corneille, Daniel Defoe, Clément Marot, Michel de Montaigne, Jean Racine, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire) for the ninth edition (1875–89) of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
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