George Saintsbury

George Saintsbury (born October 23, 1845, Southampton, Hampshire, England—died January 28, 1933, Bath, Somerset) was the most influential English literary historian and critic of the early 20th century. His lively style and wide knowledge helped make his works both popular and authoritative.

Disappointed at not getting a fellowship at Merton College, Oxford (M.A., 1868), Saintsbury spent almost a decade as a schoolmaster, at the same time beginning a lifelong study of French literature and writing reviews for the Academy. The appearance of his essay on Baudelaire in the Fortnightly Review in 1875 caught the attention of the literary world. When a school at which he was teaching failed in 1876, he decided to write for a living. He contributed 35 biographies and the article on French literature for the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed., 1875–89). He was an unorthodox critic of French literature, but his Primer of French Literature (1880), A Short History of French Literature (1882), and Specimens of French Literature from Villon to Hugo (1883) all had great success. In 1881 his study of Dryden (“English Men of Letters Series”) was the first of his extensive writings on English literature. Specimens of English Prose Style from Malory to Macaulay (1885) and A History of Elizabethan Literature (1887) followed.

In 1895 Saintsbury was appointed to the Regius chair of rhetoric and English literature at the University of Edinburgh. He continued his writing while at Edinburgh, producing, among other works, A Short History of English Literature (1898) and A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day, 3 vol. (1900–04), one of the first surveys of critical literary theory and practice from ancient Greek to modern times. He also wrote A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day, 3 vol. (1906–10); the supplementary Historical Manual of English Prosody (1910); and the complementary History of English Prose Rhythm (1912). He retired from his professorship in 1915.

Saintsbury continued his writing with The Peace of the Augustans: A Survey of Eighteenth Century Literature as a Place of Rest and Refreshment (1916) and a book on wine, Notes on a Cellar-Book (1920), which led to the foundation of the Saintsbury Club. Saintsbury’s Minor Poets of the Caroline Period, 3 vol. (1921), helped revive interest in 17th-century poetry, as did his editions of Dryden and Shadwell for Restoration drama.

Saintsbury was the foremost practitioner of the so-called conversational school of criticism; he analyzed the style of literary works and the development of literary forms in an informal, lively, and readable prose designed as much to stimulate and entertain as to inform. Saintsbury deliberately formulated no philosophy of criticism; however, certain principles underlie his writing: extensive reading, intuitive appreciation, comparative assessment, and ranking. Though a more rigorous approach has replaced his copious, wide-ranging writing, he opened the way to a broad view of Western literature and, by his diverse enthusiasms, emphasized enjoyment as literature’s primary aim.