{"product_id":"the-letters-of-matthew-arnold-matthew-arnold-9780813917658","title":"The Letters of Matthew Arnold: Volume 5","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe University Press of Virginia edition of \u003ci\u003eThe Letters of Matthew Arnold, \u003c\/i\u003e edited by Cecil Y. Lang, represents the most comprehensive and assiduously annotated collection of Arnold's correspondence available. When complete in six volumes, this edition will include close to four thousand letters, nearly five times the number in G.W.E. Russell's two-volume compilation of 1895. The letters, at once meaty and delightful, appear with a consecutiveness rare in such editions, and they contain a great deal of new information, both personal (sometimes intimate) and professional. Two new diaries are included, a handful of letters to Matthew Arnold, and many of his own that will appear in their entirety here for the first time. Renowned as a poet and critic, Arnold will be celebrated now as a letter writer. Nowhere else is Arnold's appreciation of life and literature so extravagantly evident as in his correspondence. His letters amplify the dark vision of his own verse, as well as the moral background of his criticism. As Cecil Lang writes, the letters \"may well be the finest portrait of an age and of a person, representing the main movements of mind and of events of nearly half a century and at the same time revealing the intimate life of the participant-observer, in any collection of letters in the nineteenth century, possibly in existence.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this penultimate volume of the Virginia edition of Matthew Arnold's letters, we see Arnold at his best. This period saw publication of \u003ci\u003eMixed Essays, Irish Essays, \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDiscourses in America \u003c\/i\u003eas well as of several essays gathered later in \u003ci\u003eEssays in Criticism, Second Series. The Poems of Wordsworth\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Poetry of Byron\u003c\/i\u003e appeared, as did the controversial essay \"The Study of Poetry,\" with its notorious and very readable touchstone theory.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe emotional and moral center of the volume, however, is the extraordinary series of letters written during Arnold's first American visit, during which he ranged from New York and New England to Madison, Chicago, Richmond, Washington, Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec. Like most visiting British luminaries, he meets everyone everywhere, including the president and former president, the Delanos, the Roosevelts, the Vanderbilts, and, especially, Andrew Carnegie. But the visit--a lecture tour undertaken to pay off his son's debts--had other and far more significant repercussions, for Arnold was accompanied by his wife and by his elder daughter, who met the man she was to marry--the direct cause of a second American visit and, in due course, of a flourishing branch of Arnold descendants in the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Matthew Arnold\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0813917654\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780813917658\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Virginia Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/29\/1998\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 483\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 2.51lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.78h x 6.31w x 1.75d","brand":"Matthew Arnold","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":43947304059135,"sku":"9780813917658","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_685d4cab-cb17-4aff-949e-63e15f60e35f.jpg?v=1681517923","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-letters-of-matthew-arnold-matthew-arnold-9780813917658","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}