The English Novel (Hardbound - 2014)

The book is a standard and comprehensive study of the English Novel. It would be found highly useful by the students, researchers and teachers of English Literature.

Saintsbury, George (Edward Bateman) 1845-1933 Literary historian, biographer and critic. Born at Southampton, he was educated at King’s College School, London, and Merton College, Oxford. He taught for a number of years and wrote reviews for The Academy, gaining attention with his notices of the work of French writers, especially Baudelaire, in 1875.

Saintsbury’s first book was A Primer of French Literature (1880). A Short History of French Literature (1882), a standard book for students for decades, and Specimens of French Literature from Villon to Hugo (1883) were followed by Essays on French Novelists (1891), and A History of the French Novel to the Close of the Nineteenth Century (1917-19). His books on English literature and on the history of criticism extend from 1881 to the year of his death. Among them were a study of Dryden in the English Men of Letters series (1881), Essays in English Literature 1780-1860 (two series, 1890 and 1895), A Short History of English Literature (1898), A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1896), books on Sir Walter Scott (1897) and Matthew Arnold (1898), A History of Criticism (1900-4), Minor Poets of the Caroline Period (1905-21), A History of English Prosody (1906-10), The English Novel (1913), The Peace of the Augustans (1915) and the Oxford edition of the Works of Thackeray (1907). Saintsbury contributed 21 chapters to The Cambridge History of English Literature. He was also a wine connoisseur and his Notes on a Cellar Book (1920) is an acknowledged classic of its kind.

In 1895 he was appointed to the chair of rhetoric and English literature at Edinburgh, which he held for twenty years.