The Collected Works of Walter Pater, Volume V
Studies and Reviews, 1864-1889
Will be published approx. on 10. December 2026
Book
Hardback
688 pages
978-0-19-896136-9 (ISBN)
Description
Studies and Reviews, 1864-1889 is volume five in the ten-volume Collected Works of Walter Pater. It brings together, for the first time, Pater's essays, reviews, and articles that were published in the press and not reprinted in their original form in his books. These include several texts that have not been republished since their first appearance. The volume thus offers a richer, more comprehensive overview of Pater's literary journalism, highlighting his management of his career in a rapidly evolving print media landscape, across publications such as the Westminster Review, the Academy, the Fortnightly Review, Macmillan's Magazine, The Guardian, and the Pall Mall Gazette. Most significantly, it reveals his strategies for navigating a hostile environment of conservative and homophobic critics, editors, and publishers who were opposed to the 'art for art's sake' aestheticism that Pater advocated.
The volume demonstrates the extraordinary breadth of Pater's interests. It features lengthy pieces on William Morris, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, European Romanticism, and Giordano Bruno, and shorter pieces on topics ranging from prose style, poetry, art history, theatre history, religious issues, philosophy, English as a university subject, and contemporary French fiction. Also included in the volume are Pater's reviews of works by his friends and contemporaries such as Sidney Colvin, Vernon Lee, J. W. Mackail, Marc-Andre Raffalovich, George Saintsbury, J. A. Symonds, Arthur Symons, and Mary Ward, revealing his participation in a ubiquitous practice of reciprocal reviews, facilitated by the prevailing trend for anonymity in reviewing.
The volume offers a comprehensive critical introduction, a chronology of Pater's life and contemporary events, extensive explanatory notes, and four appendices.
The volume demonstrates the extraordinary breadth of Pater's interests. It features lengthy pieces on William Morris, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, European Romanticism, and Giordano Bruno, and shorter pieces on topics ranging from prose style, poetry, art history, theatre history, religious issues, philosophy, English as a university subject, and contemporary French fiction. Also included in the volume are Pater's reviews of works by his friends and contemporaries such as Sidney Colvin, Vernon Lee, J. W. Mackail, Marc-Andre Raffalovich, George Saintsbury, J. A. Symonds, Arthur Symons, and Mary Ward, revealing his participation in a ubiquitous practice of reciprocal reviews, facilitated by the prevailing trend for anonymity in reviewing.
The volume offers a comprehensive critical introduction, a chronology of Pater's life and contemporary events, extensive explanatory notes, and four appendices.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-19-896136-9 (9780198961369)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Laurel Brake is Professor Emerita of Literature and Print Culture at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests include nineteenth-century Media History and Print Culture, Walter Pater, Gender, and Digital Humanities. She is currently writing a biography of Walter and Clara Pater for OUP. She has published widely on Pater and his circle, and on the nineteenth-century press. She was the co-founder of the Pater Newsletter (now SWPA). Books include Print in Transition 1850-1910. She is the co-editor of the Dictionary of 19C Journalism, and the PI of ncse, a free, digital edition of six nineteenth-century periodicals: https://ncse.ac.uk. She recently co-edited a special issue of the Victorian Periodicals Review on book reviewing.
Robyn Jakeman is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. She completed her PhD at Birkbeck and a postdoctoral fellowship at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She has written a monograph on Futurism and literary modernism (in press), and is currently a co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Wyndham Lewis and the Arts, for which she has also written a chapter on Lewis and Aestheticism. She has also written for Modernism/Modernity and the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (ncse). She has taught at Birkbeck, London South Bank University, and VUB.
Robyn Jakeman is an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. She completed her PhD at Birkbeck and a postdoctoral fellowship at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She has written a monograph on Futurism and literary modernism (in press), and is currently a co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Wyndham Lewis and the Arts, for which she has also written a chapter on Lewis and Aestheticism. She has also written for Modernism/Modernity and the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (ncse). She has taught at Birkbeck, London South Bank University, and VUB.
Content
General Editors' Preface Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Chronology Biographical Register Periodicals Register Critical Introduction Textual Introduction Studies and Reviews, 1864-1889 'Diaphaneite' (1864) 'Coleridge's Writings' (January 1866) 'Poems by William Morris' (October 1868) Review of Children in Italian and English Design by Sidney Colvin (July 1872) Review of Renaissance in Italy by John Addington Symonds (July 1875) 'Romanticism' (November 1876) 'Samuel Taylor Coleridge' (1880) Review of Love in Idleness by Mackail, Beeching, and Nichols (March 1883) Review of The English School of Painting by Ernest Chesneau (February 1885) 'Four Books for Students of English Literature' (February 1886) Review of Amiel's Journal by Mrs Humphry Ward (March 1886) 'English at the Universities' (November 1886) 'Vernon Lee's Juvenilia' (August 1887) Review of An Introduction to the Study of Browning by Arthur Symons (November 1887) 'M. Lemaitre's Serenus, and Other Tales' (November 1887) Review of Robert Elsmere by Mrs Humphry Ward (March 1888) Review of 'Their Majesties' Servants' by John Doran (June 1888) 'The Life and Letters of Gustave Flaubert' (August 1888) Review 1 of Three Editions of William Wordsworth's Poetry (January 1889) Review 2 of Three Editions of William Wordsworth's Poetry (February 1889) 'A Poet with Something to Say' (March 1889) Review of It Is Thyself by Marc-Andre Raffalovich (April 1889) Review of Toussaint Galabru by Ferdinand Fabre (April 1889) 'An Idyll of the Cevennes' (June 1889) Review of Correspondance de Gustave Flaubert (August 1889) 'Giordano Bruno' (August 1889) Review of A Century of Revolution by W. S. Lilly (December 1889) Textual Variants Explanatory Notes Appendix A: Tables Appendix B: Walter Pater's Hostile Environment Appendix C: The Citation of Walt Whitman in 'Romanticism' (1876) Appendix D: Russian Writers and Slavonic Studies in Late Nineteenth-Century Oxford and the British Press Bibliography Index