In analyzing the nonfiction works of writers such as John Wilson, J. S. Mill, De Quincy, Ruskin, Arnold, Pater, and Wilde, Jason Camlot provides an important context for the nineteenth-century critic's changing ideas about style, rhetoric, and technologies of communication. In particular, Camlot contributes to our understanding of how new print media affected the Romantic and Victorian critic's sense of self, as he elaborates the ways nineteenth-century critics used their own essays on rhetoric and stylistics to speculate about the changing conditions for the production and reception of ideas and the formulation of authorial character. Camlot argues that the early 1830s mark the moment when a previously coherent tradition of pragmatic rhetoric was fragmented and redistributed into the diverse, localized sites of an emerging periodicals market. Publishing venues for writers multiplied at midcentury, establishing a new stylistic norm for criticism-one that affirmed style as the manifestation of English discipline and objectivity. The figure of the professional critic soon subsumed the authority of the polyglot intellectual, and the later decades of the nineteenth century brought about a debate on aesthetics and criticism that set ideals of Saxon-rooted 'virile' style against more culturally inclusive theories of expression.

In analyzing the nonfiction works of writers such as John Wilson, J. S. Mill, De Quincy, Ruskin, Arnold, Pater, and Wilde, Jason Camlot provides an important context for the nineteenth-century critic's changing ideas about style, rhetoric, and technologies of communication. In particular, Camlot contributes to our understanding of how new print media affected the Romantic and Victorian critic's sense of self, as he elaborates the ways nineteenth-century critics used their own essays on rhetoric and stylistics to speculate about the changing conditions for the production and reception of ideas and the formulation of authorial character. Camlot argues that the early 1830s mark the moment when a previously coherent tradition of pragmatic rhetoric was fragmented and redistributed into the diverse, localized sites of an emerging periodicals market. Publishing venues for writers multiplied at midcentury, establishing a new stylistic norm for criticism-one that affirmed style as the manifestation of English discipline and objectivity. The figure of the professional critic soon subsumed the authority of the polyglot intellectual, and the later decades of the nineteenth century brought about a debate on aesthetics and criticism that set ideals of Saxon-rooted 'virile' style against more culturally inclusive theories of expression.

Music criticism in England underwent profound change from the 1880s to the 1920s. It gave rise to ‘New criticism’ that aimed to be rational, impartial and intellectually authoritative. It was a break from the criticism of old: the work of the opinionated journalist who wrote descriptive concert reviews with invective, cliché, bias and bombast. Critics such as Ernest Newman (1868–1959), John F. Runciman (1866–1916) and Michel D. Calvocoressi (1877–1944) fostered this new school and wrote extensively of their aspirations for musical criticism in their own times and for the future. This book charts the genesis of this new wave of musical criticism that sought to regulate and reform the profession of music critic. Alongside the establishment of principles, training manuals and schools for critics, hundreds of journal articles and dozens of books were written that encouraged new criticism, which also had a bearing on scholarly writing in biography, aesthetics and history. The Regulation and Reform of Music Criticism in Nineteenth-Century England considers the influence and advocacy of individual critics and the role that institutions, such as the Musical Association and the Musical Times, played in this period of change. The book also explores the impact that French and German writers had on their English counterparts, demonstrating the internationalization of critical thought of the period.

The social practice of tact was an invention of the nineteenth century, a period when Britain was witnessing unprecedented urbanization, industrialization, and population growth. In an era when more and more people lived more closely than ever before with people they knew less and less about, tact was a new mode of feeling one’s way with others in complex modern conditions. In this book, David Russell traces how the essay genre came to exemplify this sensuous new ethic and aesthetic. Russell argues that the essay form provided the resources for the performance of tact in this period and analyzes its techniques in the writings of Charles Lamb, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, and Walter Pater. He shows how their essays offer grounds for a claim about the relationship among art, education, and human freedom—an “aesthetic liberalism”—not encompassed by traditional political philosophy or in literary criticism. For these writers, tact is not about codes of politeness but about making an art of ordinary encounters with people and objects and evoking the fullest potential in each new encounter. Russell demonstrates how their essays serve as a model for a critical handling of the world that is open to surprises, and from which egalitarian demands for new relationships are made. Offering fresh approaches to thinking about criticism, sociability, politics, and art, Tact concludes by following a legacy of essayistic tact to the practice of British psychoanalysts like D. W. Winnicott and Marion Milner.

What is 'style', and how does it relate to thought in language? It has often been treated as something merely linguistic, independent of thought, ornamental; stylishness for its own sake. Or else it has been said to subserve thought, by mimicking, delineating, or heightening ideas that are already expressed in the words. This ambitious and timely book explores a third, more radical possibility in which style operates as a verbal mode of thinking through. Rather than figure thought as primary and pre-verbal, and language as a secondary delivery system, style is conceived here as having the capacity to clarify or generate thinking. The book's generic focus is on non-fiction prose, and it looks across the long nineteenth century. Leading scholars survey twenty authors to show where writers who have gained reputations as either 'stylists' or as 'thinkers' exploit the interplay between 'the what' and 'the how' of their prose. The study demonstrates how celebrated stylists might, after all, have thoughts worth attending to, and that distinguished thinkers might be enriched for us if we paid more due to their style. More than reversing the conventional categories, this innovative volume shows how 'style' and 'thinking' can be approached as a shared concern. At a moment when, especially in nineteenth-century studies, interest in style is re-emerging, this book revaluates some of the most influential figures of that age, re-imagining the possible alliances, interplays, and generative tensions between thinking, thinkers, style, and stylists.

A sweeping history of nineteenth-century Britain by one of the world's most respected historians. "An evocative account . . .[Cannadine] tells his own story persuasively and exceedingly well.” —The Wall Street Journal To live in nineteenth-century Britain was to experience an astonishing and unprecedented series of changes. Cities grew vast; there were revolutions in transportation, communication, science, and work--all while a growing religious skepticism rendered the intellectual landscape increasingly unrecognizable. It was an exhilarating time, and as a result, most of the countries in the world that experienced these changes were racked by political and social unrest. Britain, however, maintained a stable polity at home, and as a result it quickly found itself in a position of global leadership. In this major new work, leading historian David Cannadine has created a bold, fascinating new interpretation of nineteenth-century Britain. Britain was a country that saw itself at the summit of the world and, by some measures, this was indeed true. It had become the largest empire in history: its political stability positioned it as the leader of the new global economy and allowed it to construct the largest navy ever built. And yet it was also a society permeated with doubt, fear, and introspection. Repeatedly, politicians and writers felt themselves to be staring into the abyss and what is seen as an era of irritating self-belief was in fact obsessed with its own fragility, whether as a great power or as a moral force. Victorious Century is a comprehensive and extraordinarily stimulating history--its author catches the relish, humor and staginess of the age, but also the dilemmas faced by Britain's citizens, ones we remain familiar with today.