Literature and Philosophy in Nineteenth Century British Culture

Andrea Selleri, University of Warwick, is the editor of a recent book on Literary Studies and the Philosophy of Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). He has published essays on mid- and late-Victorian philosophy and literature including work on Swinburne and Wilde.

Volume 3: Literature and Philosophy in the ‘Long-Late-Victorian’ Period

Edited by Andrea Selleri

General introduction

Volume 3 introduction

Part 1. Knowledge and Belief






Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘The Science of Deduction’, of The Sign of Four (London and Philadelphia, 1890), pp. 13-17



Edwin Abbott Abbott, Preface to the 2nd edition of Flatland (London, 1884), pp. 17-22



George Eliot, ‘How We Come to Give Ourselves False Testimonials, and Believe in Them’, of Impressions of Theophrastus Such (London, 1879), pp. 228-33, 236



Henry Jones, excerpt from ‘A Criticism of Browning’s View of the Failure of Knowledge’, of Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher (London & New York, 1896), pp. 220-22, 224, 226-28



William James, excerpt from ‘The Psychology of Belief’, Mind 19.55 (Jul. 1889), pp. 325-31.



Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection’, The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Robert Bridges (London: Humphrey Milford, 1918 [written 1889]), pp. 68.



Mary Augusta Ward, excerpt from Robert Elsmere (London, 1888), pp. 338-43.



Constance Naden, ‘The Roman Philosopher to Christian Priests’ in Songs and Sonnets of Springtime (London, 1881), pp. 16-18



James Thomson, ‘Philosophy’ in The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems (London, 1880), pp. 134-37



Anon., excerpt from ‘Modern Pessimism’, Quarterly Review 196.392 (1902), pp. 625-29, 636-40, 644-45
Part 2. Self




Robert Louis Stevenson, excerpt from ‘Markheim’ in Henry Norman (ed.), The Broken Shaft: Tales of Mid-Ocean (New York, 1886), 52-7, 60-1, 65-6, 68-78



George Henry Lewes, ‘Consciousness and Unconsciousness’, Mind 2.6 (Apr. 1877), pp. 156-61, 163-66



May Sinclair, excerpt from ‘Guyon: A Philosophical Dialogue’, in Essays in Verse (London, 1891), pp. 16-23



Francis Herbert Bradley, excerpt from ‘The Meanings of Self’, of Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay (London, 1893), pp. 75-86



Mathilde Blind, section III and VI, ‘Chaunts of Life’ in The Ascent of Man (London, 1889), pp. 164-69, 182-87



Samuel Butler, ‘Thought and Language’, 1890 lecture, collected in R.A. Streatfeild (ed.) Essays on Life, Art and Science (London, 1908), pp. 176-78, 184-85, 187-92, 206-08, 225-28



Edwin Arnold, ‘Buddha Under the Bodhi Tree’, from book 6 of The Light of Asia (Chicago, 1879), pp. 155-73



Oscar Wilde (attr.), ‘The Magnet’s Story’, reported in Richard Le Gallienne’s The Romantic Nineties (Garden City, N.Y., 1925), pp. 254-56



Thomas Hardy, ‘Fore scene: The Overworld’, in The Dynasts (London, 1903).



Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, ‘The Dreams of the Prophet’, in Time and the Gods (London, 1906), pp. 118-22
Part 3. Art and Criticism




William Morris, excerpt from ‘The Prospects of Architecture in Civilisation’, 1881 lecture collected in Hopes and Fears for Art (London, 1882), pp. 190-92, 205-11



George Meredith, excerpt from ‘On the Idea of Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit’, The New Quarterly Magazine 8 (Jan. 1877), pp. 1-2, 8-9, 30, 32-33



Vernon Lee, excerpt from ‘On Literary Construction’, in The Handling of Words; And Other Studies in Literary Psychology (London: John Lane, 1922 [1886]), pp. 1, 22-29



Algernon Charles Swinburne, excerpt from ‘Victor Hugo: L’Année Terrible’, in Essays and Studies (London: Chatto and Windus, 1875 [1872]), pp. 41-45



Edward Dowden, excerpt from ‘The Interpretation of Literature’, Transcripts and Studies (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1896 [1886]), pp. 238-39, 251-52, 254, 265-68.



Ella D’Arcy (as ‘G.H. Page’), ‘Personality in Art’, Westminster Review 139.1 (Jan. 1893): 646-53.



Andrew Cecil Bradley, excerpt from ‘Poetry for Poetry’s Sake’, 1901 lecture collected in Oxford Lectures on Poetry (London, 1909), pp. 7-17



James Sully, excerpt from ‘George Eliot’s Art’, Mind 6.23 (Jul. 1881), 380-85, 390-91



Edward Caird, extract from ‘Goethe and Philosophy’, Essays on Literature and Philosophy (Glasgow: J. Maclehose & sons, 1892 [1886]), pp. 54-55, 58-60, 62-63



Havelock Ellis, extract from ‘Casanova’, in Affirmations (London, 1898), pp. 112-18
Part 4. Society




Leslie Stephen, excerpt from ‘The Moral Element in Literature’, Cornhill Magazine 43 (Jan. 1881): 34-9, 49-50



Frederick Denison Maurice, excerpt from ‘Social Morality’, in Social Morality: Twenty-One Lectures (London, 1872), pp. 7-11



Julia Wedgwood, excerpt from ‘Ethics and Literature’, Contemporary Review 71 (Jan. 1897), pp. 77-80



William Hurrell Mallock, excerpt from The New Republic (London, 1877), pp. 213-22



Walter Pater, excerpt from ‘New Cirenaicism’, of Marius the Epicurean: His Sensations and Ideas (London, 1885), pp. 143-48, 150-53



Grant Allen, excerpt from ‘The New Hedonism’, Fortnightly Review 55.327 (Mar. 1894), 379-83, 389-92



Amy Levy, ‘Xantippe’ in Xantippe, and Other Verse (London, 1881), pp. 1-13



Lewis Carroll, excerpt from Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (London, 1893), pp. 181-87



John Addington Symonds, ‘Literature – Idealistic’, of A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion (London, 1896), pp. 115-20, 122-25



Herbert George Wells, excerpt from ‘Concerning Freedoms’, of A Modern Utopia (London, 1905), pp. 31-4, 37-42

Index