George Saintsbury

George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, FBA (23 October 1845 – 28 January 1933), was an English critic, literary historian, editor, teacher, and wine connoisseur. He is regarded as a highly influential critic of the late 19th and early 20th century.[1]

George Saintsbury
Photograph by James Lafayette (c. 1910)
Photograph by James Lafayette (c. 1910)
Born23 October 1845
Southampton, England
Died28 January 1933 (aged 87)
Bath, Somerset, England
OccupationCritic, literary historian, editor
Alma mater
GenreLiterary criticism
Signature

Biography

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).[2] 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. 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),[3], and Corrected Impressions (1895).[4]

Saintsbury in March 1895 edition of The Bookman (New York City)

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.[5]

In his retirement, he continued to write, while living at 1A Royal Crescent, Bath, Somerset.

He died in 1933 at the age of 87 at Royal Crescent in Bath, Somerset.[6]

Literary criticism

His first book, A Primer of French Literature (1880), and his Short History of French Literature (1882),[7] 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), an 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.[4] He coined the term "Janeite" for a fan of Jane Austen in his introduction to an 1894 edition of Pride and Prejudice.

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.[8]

In 1901 Saintsbury edited and introduced an English edition of Honoré de Balzac's novel series La Comédie humaine, translated by Ellen Marriage and published in 1895–98 by J. M. Dent.

For the publisher William Blackwood and Sons, he edited the series of Periods of European Literature, contributing volumes on The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (1897) and The Earlier Renaissance (1901).[9][4]

Saintsbury subsequently produced some of his most important works: A History of Criticism (3 vols., 1900–1904), with the companion volume Loci Critici: Passages Illustrative of Critical Theory and Practice (Boston, Mass., and London, 1903), and A History of English Prosody from the 12th Century to the Present Day (i., 1906; ii., 1908; iii., 1910); also The Later Nineteenth Century (1909).[4] These were followed by a History of English Prose Rhythm (1912), The English Novel (1913), A First Book of English Literature (1914), The Peace of the Augustans (1916), A History of the French Novel (2 volumes, 1917–9) and Notes on a Cellarbook (1920).[10]

In 1925 he arranged for the publication of a lost recipe book by Anne Blencoe, which had been rediscovered in Weston Hall 200 years after her death. Saintsbury wrote a short introduction to the reissued book.[11]

Wine

Although Saintsbury was best known during his lifetime as a scholar, he is also remembered today for his Notes on a Cellar-Book (1920), one of the great testimonials to drink and drinking in wine literature. When he was close to death, André Simon arranged a dinner in his honour. Although Saintsbury did not attend, this was the start of the Saintsbury Club, men of letters and members of the wine trade who continue to have dinners to this day.

Political views

Saintsbury espoused deeply conservative views in political and social matters. George Orwell calls him a 'confessed reactionary'[12] in his 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier and cites various extracts from the Scrapbooks which display Saintsbury's class-based disdain for the welfare state and paupers.

Legacy

T.S. Eliot dedicated the publication of his book Homage to John Dryden: Three Essays on the Poetry of the 17th Century (1924) to Saintsbury.[13]

1A Royal Crescent, where Saintsbury lived from 1915 until his death in 1933, was the subject of a restoration and renovation programme by the Bath Preservation Trust during 2012 to reincorporate it into 1 Royal Crescent, of which it was the original servants' quarters. It opened to visitors for the first time in 2013. An exhibition celebrating Saintsbury's life was mounted in the house in 2014.

A biography of Saintsbury, written by Dorothy Richardson Jones and giving extensive commentary on his works, was published in 1992.[14]

Bibliography
Original title page for Saintsbury's The English Novel (1913)

References
  1. "George Saintsbury | British critic and historian". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
  2. Levens, R.G.C., ed. (1964). Merton College Register 1900–1964. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. p. 69.
  3. "Review of Miscellaneous Essays by George Saintsbury". The Athenaeum (3383): 277–278. 27 August 1892.
  4. Chisholm 1911.
  5. Graves, Charles (1974), Men of Letters, in The Scottish Arts Club, Edinburgh, 1874 - 1974, The Scottish Arts Club, Edinburgh, p. 51
  6. Lowndes, William (1981). The Royal Crescent in Bath. Redcliffe Press. ISBN 978-0-905459-34-9.
  7. Bourget, Paul (10 February 1883). "Saintsbury's Short History of French Literature". The Academy (in French). 23 (562): 98–99.
  8. Important Contributors to the Britannica, 9th and 10th Editions, 1902encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
  9. George Saintsbury, The Earlier Renaissance, archive.org. Retrieved 17 April 2017.
  10. Chisholm 1922.
  11. William Sitwell (18 June 2013). A History of Food in 100 Recipes. Little, Brown. pp. 135–. ISBN 978-0-316-25570-7.
  12. Orwell, George (1937). The Road to Wigan Pier. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-018238-1.
  13. "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Homage to John Dreyden, by T. S. Eliot". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 21 April 2022.
  14. Jones, Dorothy Richardson (1992). "King of critics" : George Saintsbury, 1845-1933, critic, journalist, historian, professor. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-10316-4. OCLC 25026036.
  15. "Review of History of Criticism by George Saintsbury, vol. II". The Athenaeum (3946): 743–744. 13 June 1903.
  16. Murry, J. Middleton (30 December 1922). "Review of A Scrap Book by George Saintsbury". The Nation and the Athenæum. 32, Part 1 (4835): 522.

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