First published in 1912 by Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, the book presents studies by Sarah Julie Mary Suddard on the works of Keats, Shelley, and Shakespeare, together with essays on other literary topics. It is in two parts. The first part of the book critically studies three literary legends—Keats, Shelley, and Shakespeare, while the second part includes essays on a more general overview of English literature. Notes are incorporated throughout to make the reading interesting and fruitful.
In the first part of the book, Suddard includes three essays on Keats, viz. The Evolution of Keats’s Mind, Keats’s “Prelude”, and Keats’s Style as Exemplified in The Eve of St. Agnes; four essays on Shelley, viz. The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, Shelley’s Transcendentalism, Shelley’s Idealism, and The Image in Shelley’s Hellas; and two essays on Shakespeare, viz. The Blending of Prose, Blank Verse and Rhymed Verse in Romeo and Juliet and Measure for Measure as a Clue to Shakespeare’s Attitude towards Puritanism. Second part of the book includes essays such as Chaucer’s Art of Portraiture, Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella, Three of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (59, 60, 61), A Parallel between Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, Addison’s Humour: Its Matter and its Form, Swift’s Poetry, Wordsworth’s “Imagination”, Rossetti’s The House of Life, and The Character of John Inglesant in the novel John Inglesant by Joseph Henry Shorthouse.
The first part of the book, Keats, Shelley and Shakespeare Studies, was written in English, whereas the second part, Essays in English Literature, was originally in French. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, and literary criticism.
S.J.M. Suddard, L.L.A., Fellow Univ. Gall., was a French author who used to write in French and English.