Matthew Arnold Selected poems and prose

Matthew Arnold, Miriam Allott

Matthew Arnold's poetry of loss and longing gave way in later years to the prose writings which established him, both in his own day and in ours, as a major critic of literature and society. This new Everyman selection by Professor Miriam Allott of both his poems and prose is invaluable in showing the 'unity in diversity' of Arnold's creative intelligence. As an earlier critic has said:... his efforts in the two fields are inseparable, and the reader who knows only one body of his work can hardly know even that. The main concern in this volume is for representativeness and centrality; 'Empedocles on Etna', Arnold's major long poem, is included and Culture and Anarchy, for example, is represented by key passages which link up with passages selected from other works, rather than by the two or three chapters often taken from it. Professor Allott supplements her selection with a detailed introduction and full notes. Together they provide a comprehensive picture of this most attractive of the Eminent Victorians who could be serious without stuffness and entertaining without being frivolous.