Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888),circa 1883. Photo by Elliott & Fry. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Matthew Arnold
Died	April 15 April 1888 (Template:Four digit-04-16)
Nationality	British
Notable work(s)	"Dover Beach", "The Scholar-Gipsy", "Thyrsis", Culture and Anarchy, Literature and Dogma

Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 - 15 April 1888) was an English poet, and cultural and literary critic, who worked as an inspector of schools.

Arnold is sometimes called the 3rd great Victorian poet, along with Tennyson and Robert Browning.

Life

Overview

Arnold, son of Dr. Arnold of Rugby, was born at Laleham and educated at Rugby, Winchester, and Balliol College, Oxford, becoming a Fellow of Oriel in 1845. Thereafter he was private secretary to Lord Lansdowne, Lord President of the Council, through whose influence he was in 1851 appointed an inspector of schools. 2 years before this he had published his first book of poetry, The Strayed Reveller, which he soon withdrew: some of the poems, however, including "Mycerinus" and "The Forsaken Merman," were afterwards republished, and the same applies to his next book, Empedocles on Etna (1852), with "Tristram and Iseult." In 1857 he was appointed to the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford, which he held for 10 years. After this he produced little poetry and devoted himself to criticism and theology.

The rationalistic tendency of certain of his writings gave offence to many readers, and the sufficiency of his equipment in scholarship for dealing with some of the subjects which he handled was called in question; but he undoubtedly exercised a stimulating influence on his time; his writings are characterised by the finest culture, high purpose, sincerity, and a style of great distinction, and much of his poetry has an exquisite and subtle beauty, though here also it has been doubted whether high culture and wide knowledge of poetry did not sometimes take the place of the true poetic fire.

Youth

Arnold was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. The Reverend John Keble, who would become one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement, stood as godfather to Matthew. "Thomas Arnold admired Keble's 'hymns' in The Christian Year, only reversing himself with exasperation when this old friend became a Romeward-tending 'High Church' reactionary in the 1830s." In 1828, Arnold's father was appointed Headmaster of Rugby School and his young family took up residence, that year, in the Headmaster's house. In 1831, Arnold was tutored by his uncle, the Reverend John Buckland, at Laleham, Middlesex.

Family tree

In 1834, the Arnolds occupied a holiday home, Fox How, in the Lake District. William Wordsworth was a neighbor and close friend. In 1836, Arnold was sent to Winchester College, but in 1837 he returned to Rugby School where he was enrolled in the fifth form. He moved to the sixth form in 1838 and thus came under the direct tutelage of his father. He wrote verse for the manuscript Fox How Magazine produced by Matthew and his brother Tom for the family's enjoyment from 1838 to 1843. During his years as a Rugby student, he won school prizes for English essay writing, and Latin and English poetry. His prize poem, "Alaric at Rome," was printed at Rugby.

In 1841, he won an open scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. During his residence at Oxford, his friendship ripened with Arthur Hugh Clough, another graduate of Rugby who had been one of his father's favourites. Arnold attended John Henry Newmam's sermons at St. Mary's, but did not join the Oxford Movement. His father died suddenly of heart disease in 1842, and Fox How became the family's permanent residence. He graduated in 1844 with a 2nd Class Honours degree in "Greats."

In 1845, after a short interlude of teaching at Rugby, he was elected a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. In 1847, he became Private Secretary to Lord Lansdowne, Lord President of the Council. In 1849 he published his 1st book of poetry, The Strayed Reveller. In 1850 Wordsworth died, amd Arnold published his "Memorial Verses" on the older poet in Fraser's Magazine.

Marriage and career

Wishing to marry, but unable to support a family on the wages of a private secretary, Arnold sought the position of, and was appointed, in April 1851, one of Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools. Two months later, he married Frances Lucy, daughter of Sir William Wightman, Justice of the Queen's Bench. The Arnolds had six children: Thomas (1852–1868); Trevenen William (1853–1872); Richard Penrose (1855–1908), an inspector of factories; Lucy Charlotte (1858–1934) who married Frederick W. Whitridge of New York, whom she had met during Arnold's American lecture tour; Eleanore Mary Caroline (1861–1936) married (1) Hon. Armine Wodehouse in 1889, (2) William Masefield, Baron Sandhurst, in 1909; Basil Francis (1866–1868).

Arnold often described his duties as a school inspector as "drudgery," although "at other times he acknowledged the benefit of regular work." The inspectorship required him, at least at first, to travel constantly and across much of England. "Initially, Arnold was responsible for inspecting Nonconformist schools across a broad swath of central England. He spent many dreary hours during the 1850s in railway waiting-rooms and small-town hotels, and longer hours still in listening to children reciting their lessons and parents reciting their grievances. But that also meant that he, among the first generation of the railway age, travelled across more of England than any man of letters had ever done. Although his duties were later confined to a smaller area, Arnold knew the society of provincial England better than most of the metropolitan authors and politicians of the day."

Literary career

"Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)". Drasing by Frederick Waddy (1848-1901), from Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day, 1872. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

In 1852, Arnold published his 2nd volume of poems, Empedocles on Etna, and other poems. In 1853, he published Poems: A new edition, a selection from the 2 earlier volumes famously excluding Empedocles on Etna, but adding new poems, Sohrab and Rustum and The Scholar Gipsy. In 1854, Poems: Second series appeared; also a selection, it included the new poem, Balder Dead.

Arnold was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857. He was the first to deliver his lectures in English rather than Latin. He was re-elected in 1862. On Translating Homer (1861) and the initial thoughts that Arnold would transform into Culture and Anarchy were among the fruits of the Oxford lectures. In 1859, he conducted the 1st of 3 trips to the continent at the behest of parliament to study European educational practices. He self-published The Popular Education of France (1861), the introduction to which was later published under the title Democracy (1879).

In 1865, Arnold published Essays in Criticism: First series. Essays in Criticism: Second series would not appear until November 1888, shortly after his untimely death. In 1866, he published Thyrsis, his elegy to Clough who had died in 1861. Culture and Anarchy, Arnold's major work in social criticism (and one of the few pieces of his prose work currently in print) was published in 1869. Literature and Dogma, Arnold's major work in religious criticism appeared in 1873. In 1883 and 1884, Arnold toured the United States delivering lectures onw education, democracy and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1883.

In 1886, he retired from school inspection and made another trip to America. Arnold died suddenly in 1888 of heart failure, when running to meet a tram that would have taken him to the Liverpool Landing Stage to see his daughter, who was visiting from the United States where she had moved after marrying an American.

Arnold's character

Matthew Arnold "was indeed the most delightful of companions," wrote G.W.E. Russell in Portraits of the Seventies; "a man of the world entirely free from worldliness and a man of letters without the faintest trace of pedantry." A familiar figure at the Athenaeum Club, a frequent diner-out and guest at great country houses, fond of fishing and shooting, a lively conversationalist, affecting a combination of foppishness and Olympian grandeur, he read constantly, widely, and deeply, and in the intervals of supporting himself and his family by the quiet drudgery of school inspecting, filled notebook after notebook with meditations of an almost monastic tone. In his writings, he often baffled and sometimes annoyed his contemporaries by the apparent contradiction between his urbane, even frivolous manner in controversy, and the "high seriousness" of his critical views and the melancholy, almost plaintive note of much of his poetry. "A voice poking fun in the wilderness" was T.H. Warren's description of him.

Writing

Matthew Arnold has been characterized as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues.

Caricature of Arnold from Punch, 1881: "Admit that Homer sometimes nods, That poets do write trash, Our Bard has writtenBalder Dead, And also Balder-dash". Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Poetry

John Cowper Powys, an admirer, wrote that, "with the possible exception of Merope, Matthew Arnold's poetry is arresting from cover to cover - [he] is the great amateur of English poetry.... [He] always has the air of an ironic and urbane scholar chatting freely, perhaps a little indiscreetly, with his not very respectful pupils."

Arnold was keenly aware of his place in poetry. In an 1869 letter to his mother, he wrote:

My poems represent, on the whole, the main movement of mind of the last quarter of a century, and thus they will probably have their day as people become conscious to themselves of what that movement of mind is, and interested in the literary productions which reflect it. It might be fairly urged that I have less poetical sentiment than Tennyson and less intellectual vigour and abundance than Browning; yet because I have perhaps more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn as they have had theirs."

Stefan Collini regards this as "an exceptionally frank, but not unjust, self-assessment.... Arnold's poetry continues to have scholarly attention lavished upon it, in part because it seems to furnish such striking evidence for several central aspects of the intellectual history of the nineteenth century, especially the corrosion of 'Faith' by 'Doubt'. No poet, presumably, would wish to be summoned by later ages merely as an historical witness, but the sheer intellectual grasp of Arnold's verse renders it peculiarly liable to this treatment."

Harold Bloom echoes Arnold's self reference in his introduction (as series editor) to the Modern Critical Views volume on Arnold: "Arnold got into his poetry what Tennyson and Browning scarcely needed (but absorbed anyway), the main march of mind of his time." Of his poetry, Bloom says, "Whatever his achievement as a critic of literature, society, or religion, his work as a poet may not merit the reputation it has continued to hold in the twentieth century. Arnold is, at his best, a very good but highly derivative poet.... As with Tennyson, Hopkins, and Rossetti, Arnold's dominant precursor was Keats, but this is an unhappy puzzle, since Arnold (unlike the others) professed not to admire Keats greatly, while writing his own elegiac poems in a diction, meter, imagistic procedure, that are embarrassingly close to Keats."

Sir Edmund Chambers noted, however, that "in a comparison between the best works of Matthew Arnold and that of his six greatest contemporaries... the proportion of work which endures is greater in the case of Matthew Arnold than in any one of them." Chambers judged Arnold's poetic vision by "its simplicity, lucidity, and straightforwardness; its literalness...; the sparing use of aureate words, or of far-fetched words, which are all the more effective when they come; the avoidance of inversions, and the general directness of syntax, which gives full value to the delicacies of a varied rhythm, and makes it, of all verse that I know, the easiest to read aloud."

His literary career – leaving out the two prize poems – had begun in 1849 with the publication of The Strayed Reveller, and other poems by "A.", which attracted little notice – although it contained perhaps Arnold's most purely poetical poem "The Forsaken Merman" – and was soon withdrawn. Empedocles on Etna, and other poems (among them "Tristram and Iseult "), published in 1852, had a similar fate. In 1858 he brought out his tragedy of "Merope," calculated, he wrote to a friend, "rather to inaugurate my Professorship with dignity than to move deeply the present race of humans," and chiefly remarkable for some experiments in unusual (and unsuccessful) meters.

His 1867 poem "Dover Beach" depicted a nightmarish world from which the old religious verities have receded. It is sometimes held up as an early, if not the 1st, example of the modern sensibility. In a famous preface to a selection of the poems of William Wordsworth, Arnold identified himself, a little ironically, as a "Wordsworthian." The influence of Wordsworth, both in ideas and in diction, is unmistakable in Arnold's best poetry. Arnold's poem, "Dover Beach" appears in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and is also featured prominently in Saturday by Ian McEwan. It has also been quoted or alluded to in a variety of other contexts (see Dover Beach).

Some consider Arnold to be the bridge between Romanticism and Modernism. His use of symbolic landscapes was typical of the Romantic era, while his skeptical and pessimistic perspective was typical of the Modern era. The rationalistic tendency of certain of his writings gave offence to many readers, and the sufficiency of his equipment in scholarship for dealing with some of the subjects which he handled was called in question, but he undoubtedly exercised a stimulating influence on his time. His writings are characterised by the finest culture, high purpose, sincerity, and a style of great distinction, and much of his poetry has an exquisite and subtle beauty, though here also it has been doubted whether high culture and wide knowledge of poetry did not sometimes take the place of true poetic fire. Henry James wrote that Arnold's poetry will appeal to those who "like their pleasures rare" and who like to hear the poet "taking breath."

The mood of Arnold's poetry tends to be of plaintive reflection, and he is restrained in expressing emotion. He felt that poetry should be the 'criticism of life' and express a philosophy. Arnold's philosophy is that true happiness comes from within, and that people should seek within themselves for good, while being resigned in acceptance of outward things and avoiding the pointless turmoil of the world. However, he argues that we should not live in the belief that we shall one day inherit eternal bliss. If we are not happy on earth, we should moderate our desires rather than live in dreams of something that may never be attained. This philosophy is clearly expressed in such poems as "Dover Beach" and in these lines from "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse":

Wandering between two worlds, one dead

The other powerless to be born,

With nowhere yet to rest my head

Like these, on earth I wait forlorn.

Arnold valued natural scenery for its peace and permanence in contrast with the ceaseless change of human things. His descriptions are often picturesque, and marked by striking similes. However, at the same time he liked subdued colours, mist and moonlight. He seems to prefer the â'spent lights' of the sea-depths in "The Forsaken Merman" to the village life preferred by the merman's lost wife.

In his poetry he derived not only the subject matter of his narrative poems from various traditional or literary sources but even much of the romantic melancholy of his earlier poems from Senancour's "Obermann".

Prose

Assessing the importance of Arnold's prose work in 1988, Stefan Collini stated, "for reasons to do with our own cultural preoccupations as much as with the merits of his writing, the best of his prose has a claim on us today that cannot be matched by his poetry." "Certainly there may still be some readers who, vaguely recalling 'Dover Beach' or 'The Scholar Gipsy' from school anthologies, are surprised to find he 'also' wrote prose."

George Watson follows George Saintsbury in dividing Arnold's career as a prose writer into 3 phases: 1) early literary criticism that begins with his preface to the 1853 edition of his poems and ends with the first series of Essays in Criticism (1865); 2) a prolonged middle period (overlapping the first and third phases) characterized by social, political and religious writing (roughly 1860-1875); 3) a return to literary criticism with the selecting and editing of collections of Wordsworth's and Byron's poetry and the second series of Essays in Criticism. Both Watson and Saintsbury declare their preference for Arnold's literary criticism over his social or religious criticism. More recent writers, such as Collini, have shown a greater interest in his social writing, while over the years a significant second tier of criticism has focused on Arnold's religious writing. His writing on education has not drawn a significant critical endeavor separable from the criticism of his social writings.

Selections from the Prose Work of Matthew Arnold

Literary criticism

Arnold's work as a literary critic began with the 1853 "Preface to the Poems". In it, he attempted to explain his extreme act of self-censorship in excluding the dramatic poem "Empedocles on Etna". With its emphasis on the importance of subject in poetry, on "clearness of arrangement, rigor of development, simplicity of style" learned from the Greeks, and in the strong imprint of Goethe and Wordsworth, may be observed nearly all the essential elements in his critical theory. George Watson described the preface, written by the thirty-one year old Arnold, as "oddly stiff and graceless when we think of the elegance of his later prose."

Criticism began to take first place in Arnold's writing with his appointment in 1857 to the professorship of poetry at Oxford, which he held for two successive terms of five years. In 1861 his lectures On Translating Homer were published, to be followed in 1862 by Last Words on Translating Homer, both volumes admirable in style and full of striking judgments and suggestive remarks, but built on rather arbitrary assumptions and reaching no well-established conclusions. Especially characteristic, both of his defects and his qualities, are on the one hand, Arnold's unconvincing advocacy of English hexameters and his creation of a kind of literary absolute in the "grand style," and, on the other, his keen feeling of the need for a disinterested and intelligent criticism in England.

Although Arnold's poetry received only mixed reviews and attention during his lifetime, his forays into literary criticism were more successful. Arnold is famous for introducing a methodology of literary criticism somewhere between the historicist approach common to many critics at the time and the personal essay; he often moved quickly and easily from literary subjects to political and social issues. His Essays in Criticism (1865, 1888), remains a significant influence on critics to this day. In one of his most famous essays on the topic, "The Study of Poetry" Arnold wrote that, "Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry". He considered the most important criteria used to judge the value of a poem were â"high truth" and "high seriousness". By this standard, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales did not merit Arnold's approval. Further, Arnold thought the works that had been proven to possess both "high truth" and "high seriousness", such as those of Shakespeare and Milton, could be used as a basis of comparison to determine the merit of other works of poetry. He also sought for literary criticism to remain disinterested, and said that the appreciation should be of “the object as in itself it really is."

Social criticism

He was led on from literary criticism to a more general critique of the spirit of his age. Between 1867 and 1869 he wrote Culture and Anarchy, famous for the term he popularised for the middle class of the English Victorian era population: "Philistines", a word which derives its modern cultural meaning (in English - the German-language usage was well established) from him. Culture and Anarchy is also famous for its popularization of the phrase "sweetness and light," first coined by Jonathan Swift.

Arnold's "want of logic and thoroughness of thought" as noted by John M. Robertson in Modern Humanists was an aspect of the inconsistency of which Arnold was accused. Few of his ideas were his own, and he failed to reconcile the conflicting influences which moved him so strongly. "There are four people, in especial," he once wrote to Cardinal Newman, "from whom I am conscious of having learnt -- a very different thing from merely receiving a strong impression -- learnt habits, methods, ruling ideas, which are constantly with me; and the four are Goethe, Wordsworth, Sainte-Beuve, and yourself." Dr. Arnold must be added; the son's fundamental likeness to the father was early pointed out by Swinburne, and was later attested by Matthew Arnold's grandson, Mr. Arnold Whitridge. Brought up in the tenets of the Philistinism which, as a professed cosmopolitan and the Apostle of Culture he attacked, he remained something of a Philistine to the end.

Journalistic criticism

In 1887, Arnold was credited with coining the phrase "New Journalism", a term that went on to define an entire genre of newspaper history, particularly Lord Northcliffe's turn-of-the-century press empire. However, at the time, the target of Arnold's irritation was not Northcliffe, but the sensational journalism of Pall Mall Gazette editor, W.T. Stead. Arnold had enjoyed a long and mutually beneficial association with the Pall Mall Gazette since its inception in 1865. As an occasional contributor, he had formed a particular friendship with its first editor, Frederick Greenwood and a close acquaintance with its second, John Morley. But he strongly disapproved of the muck-raking Stead, and declared that, under Stead, "the P.M.G., whatever may be its merits, is fast ceasing to be literature."

Religious criticism

His religious views were unusual for his time. Scholars of Arnold's works disagree on the nature of Arnold's personal religious beliefs. Under the influence of Baruch Spinoza and his father, Dr. Thomas Arnold, he rejected the superstitious elements in religion, even while retaining a fascination for church rituals. Arnold seems to belong to a pragmatic middle ground that is more concerned with the poetry of religion and its virtues and values for society than with the existence of God.

He wrote in the preface of God and the Bible in 1875 “The personages of the Christian heaven and their conversations are no more matter of fact than the personages of the Greek Olympus and their conversations.” He also wrote in Literature and Dogma: "The word 'God' is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness — a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs." He defined religion as "morality touched with emotion".

However, he also wrote in the same book, "to pass from a Christianity relying on its miracles to a Christianity relying on its natural truth is a great change. It can only be brought about by those whose attachment to Christianity is such, that they cannot part with it, and yet cannot but deal with it sincerely."

Recognition

Matthew Arnold plaque, 2 Chester Square, Belgravia, London, 2011. Photo by Simon Harriyott. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0), courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Arnold's poem "Cromwell" won the 1843 Newdigate prize.

In 1883 he received a pension of £250.

Arnold is commemorated in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, by a bust sculpted by Alfred Bruce-Joy, and unveiled in 1891. Originally placed in the south west tower chapel, it was moved to Poets' Corner in 1989. He is also commoemorated by a mural tablet by Donald Buttress, unveiled in 1989. Arnold is the only person with 2 memorials in the Abbey.

7 of his poems ("The Forsaken Merman", "The Song of Callicles", "To Marguerite", "Requiescat", "The Scholar-Gipsy", "Philomela", "Shakespeare", and "From the Hymn of Empedocles") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

He has a primary school named after him in Liverpool, where he died, and secondary schools named after him in Oxford and Staines.

Publications

Main article: Matthew Arnold bibliography

Poetry

• Alaric at Rome: A prize poem. Rugby, UK: Combe & Crosley, 1840.
• Cromwell: A prize poem. Oxford: J. Vincent, 1843.
• The Strayed Reveller, and other poems. London: B. Fellowes, 1849..
• Empedocles on Etna, and other poems. London: B. Fellowes, 1852.
• Poems: A new edition: London: Longman, 1853.
• Poems: Second Series. London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1855.
• Poems: A new and complete edition. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1856.
• New Poems. London: Macmillan, 1867; Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867.
• Poems by Matthew Arnold. London: Macmillan, 1869. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III
• Poems: New and complete edition. New York: Thomas Crowell, 1880.
• Selected Poems. London & New York: Macmillan, 1886.
• Poetical Works. London & New York: Macmillan, 1890.
• Poems, 1849-1864 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). London: Oxford University Press, 1906.
• Select Poems (edited by Edward Everett Hale, Jr.). Boston: D.C. Heath, 1908.
• Poems, 1849-1867 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch & Guy Saint Quintin). London & New York: Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1926.
• Poems, 1840-1867 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). London: Oxford University Press / Humphrey Milford, 1930.
• A Selection of his Poems (edited by Kenneth Allott). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1954.

Plays

• Merope: A tragedy. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1858.

Non-fiction

• England and the Italian Question. London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1859.
• The Popular Education of France: With notices of that of Holland and Switzerland. London : Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1861.
• On Translating Homer: Last words: A lecture given at Oxford. London : Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1862.
• Heinrich Heine. Philadelpha: Frederick Leypoldt / New York: F.W. Christern, 1863.
• A French Eton; or, Middle-class education and the state. London & Cambridge, UK: Macmillan, 1864.
• Essays in Criticism. London and Cambridge, UK: Macmillan and Co., 1865.
• On the Study of Celtic Literature. London: Smith, Elder, 1867.
• Schools and Universities on the Continent. London: Macmillan, 1868.
• Culture and Anarchy: An essay in political and social criticism. London: Smith, Elder, 1869.
• On the Modern Element in Literature. (1869)
• Literature and Dogma: An essay towards a better apprehension of the Bible. London: Smith, Elder, 1873; Boston: James R. Osgoo, 1873.
• Higher Schools and Universities in Germany. London: Macmillan, 1874.
• God and the Bible: A review of objections to 'Literature and Dogma'. London: Smith, Elder, 1875.
• St. Paul and Protestantism; with an essay on Puritanism and the Church of England. London: Smith, Elder, 1875.
• Last Essays on Church and Religion. London: Smith, Elder, 1877.
• Mixed Essays. London: Smith, Elder, 1879.
• Irish Essays, and others. London: Smith, Elder, 1882.
• Discourses in America. London: Macmillan, 1885.
• Essays in Criticism: Second series. London & New York: Macmillan, 1888.
• Civilization in the United States: First and last impressions of America. Boston: Cupples & Hurd, 1888.
• Reports on Elementary Schools, 1852-1882. London & New York: Macmillan, 1888.
• The Study of Poetry. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1890.
• Essays in Criticism: Third series. (introduction by Edward J. O'Brien). Boston: Ball, 1910.
• Essays by Matthew Arnold. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1914.
• Essays (edited by Francis William Newman). London: Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1936.
• Representative Essays (edited by E.K. Brown). Toronto: Macmillan, 1936.

Collected editions

• Passages from the Prose Writings. London: Smith, Elder, 1880.
• The Works of Matthew Arnold (edited by George William Erskine Russell; Thomas Burnett Smart). (15 volumes), London: Macmillan, 1903-1904.
• Dramas and Prize-poems (edited by Laurie Magnus). London: Routledge / New York: Dutton, 1906.
• Thoughts on Education: Chosen from the writings of Matthew Arnold (edited by Leonard Huxley). London: Smith, Elder, 1912; New York, Macmillan, 1912.
• Selections from the Prose Works (edited by William Savage Johnson). Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913.
• Selections from Matthew Arnold (edited by Richard Wilson). London & Einburgh: Nelson, 1942.
• The Portable Matthew Arnold (edited by Lionel Trilling). New York: Viking, 1949.
• The Complete Prose Work (edited by Robert Henry Super). (11 volumes), Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1960-1977.
• Poetry and Criticism (edited by A. Dwight Culler). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.
• Matthew Arnold and the Education of the New Order: A selection of Arnold's writings on education (edited by Peter Smith & Geoffrey Summerfield). London: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
• Matthew Arnold on Education (edited by Gillian Sutherland). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1973.

Edited

• Friendship's Garland: Being the conversations, letters and opinions of the late Arminius, Baron von Thunder-Ten-Tronckh. London: Smith, Elder, 1971.

Letters and journals

• Letters of Matthew Arnold, 1848-1888 (edited by George William Erskine Russell). London & New York: Macmillan, 1895. w
• Unpublished Letters (edited by Arnold Whitridge). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1923.
• The Letters of Mattthew Arnold to Arthur Hugh Clough (edited by Howard Foster Lowry). London: Oxford University Press / Humphrey Milford, 1932.
• The Notebooks of Matthew Arnold (edited by Howard Foster Lowry, Waldo Hilary Dunn, & Karl Young). London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1952.
• Selected Lettters (edited by Clinton Machann & Forrest D Burt). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
• The Letters of Matthew Arnold (edited by Cecil Y. Lang). (6 volumes), Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2001.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Audio / video

Matthew Arnold "Longing" Poem animation

• Treasury of Matthew Arnold (LP; read by Robert Spaight). New Rochelle, NY: Spoken Arts, 1967.

Poems by Matthew Arnold

1. Dover Beach

See also

• List of British poets
• List of literary critics

Preceded by Thomas Legh Claughton

Oxford Professor of Poetry 1857-1867

Succeeded by Francis Hastings Doyle

References

"Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold (read by Ernst Pattynama)

Growing Old-0

Biographies

(by publication date):

• [George Saintsbury]], Matthew Arnold. New York:Dodd, Mead, 1899.
• Herbert W. Paul, Mathew Arnold. London: Macmillan, 1902.
• G.W. E. Russell, Matthew Arnold (New York: Scribner, 1904)
• Lionel Trilling, Matthew Arnold. New York: Norton, 1939.
• Park Honan, Matthew Arnold: A life. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1981. ISBN 0-07-029697-9
• Stefan Collini, Arnold. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Nicholas Murray, A Life of Matthew Arnold. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.
• Ian Hamilton, A Gift Imprisoned: A poetic life of Matthew Arnold. London: Bloomsbury, 1998.

Bibliography

• Thomas Burnett Smart, The Bibliography of Matthew Arnold 1892; New York: Burt Franklin (Bibliography and Reference Series #159), 1968,
• Laurence W. Mazzeno, Matthew Arnold: The criticallegacy. Woodbridge: Camden House, 1999.

Criticism

• G.W.E. Russell, Portraits of the Seventies. New York: Scribner, 1916)
• Sir Edmund Chambers, "Matthew Arnold," Watson Lecture on English Poetry, 1932, in English Critical Essays: Twentieth century (edited by Phyllis M. Jones). London: Oxford University Press, 1933.
• T.S. Eliot, "Matthew Arnold" in The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933.
• Chauncey Brewster Tinker & Howard Foster Lowry, The Poetry of Matthew Arnold: A commentary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1940. Alibris ID 8235403151
• W.F. Connell, The Educational Thought and Influence of Matthew Arnold. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd, 1950)
• George Watson, "Matthew Arnold" in The Literary Critics: A study of English descriptive criticism. Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1962.
• A. Dwight Culler, Imaginative Reason: The poetry of Matthew Arnold. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966.
• David J. DeLaura, Hebrew and Hellene in Victorian England: Newman, Arnold, and Pater. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1969.
• Northrop Frye, "The Critical Path: An essay on the social context of literary criticism". in Daedalus 99:2, 268-342, Spring 1970; New York: Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1983. ISBN 0-7108-0641-8
• Joseph Carroll, The Cultural Theory of Matthew Arnold. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1981.
• Ruth apRoberts, Arnold and God. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983.
• Harold Bloom (editor), Modern Critical Views: Matthew Arnold. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987.
• David G. Riede, Matthew Arnold and the Betrayal of Language. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1988.
• Donald Stone, Communications with the Future: Matthew Arnold in dialogue. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997.
• Linda Ray Pratt, Matthew Arnold Revisited. New York: Twayne, 2000. ISBN 080571698
• Renzo D'Agnillo, The Poetry of Matthew Arnold. Rome: Aracne, 2005.

Notes

,Abbreviation: CPW stands for Robert H. Super (editor), The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold.

External links

Poems

• "Progress"
• Matthew Arnold 1822-1888 at the Poetry Foundation
• Matthew Arnold profile & 5 poms at the Academy of American Poets
• Matthew Arnold at Sonnet Central (5 sonnets).
• Matthew Arnold in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900: "The Forsaken Merman", "The Song of Callicles", "To Marguerite", "Requiescat", "The Scholar-Gipsy", "Philomela", "Shakespeare", and "From the Hymn of Empedocles".
• Arnold in A Victorian Anthology: from "Baldur Dead", "The Forsaken Merman," "Philomela," "Dover Beach," from "Empedocles on Etna", "The Buried Life," "Memorial Verses," "Geist's Grave," *Arnold in The English Poets: An anthology: "To a Friend," "Shakespeare," "Requiescat," "Human Life," "The poet, to whose mighty heart" (from Resignation), "He spoke; and as he ceased, he wept aloud" (from Sohrab and Rustum), "The Forsaken Merman," "Austerity of Poetry," "To Marguerite," "Dover Beach," "Palladium," "Morality," "Memorial Verses (April, 1850)," "Rugby Chapel (November, 1857)," "Thyrsis"
  • from Empedocles on Etna: The Strayed Reveller, Callicles' Song
• Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888) - 29 poems (Apollo Musagetes, Bacchanalia, The Buried Life, Cadmus and Harmonia, Consolation, Dover Beach, The Forsaken Merman, The Future, Immortality, Isolation: To Marguerite, Lines Written in Kensington Gardens, Memorial Verses April 1850, Morality, Mycerinus, Obermann Once More, Palladium, Philomela, Requiescat, Rugby Chapel, The Scholar-Gipsy, Self-Dependence, Shakespeare, Sohrab and Rustum, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, The Strayed Reveller, Thyrsis: A Monody,To Marguerite: Continued, Worldly Place, Youth and Calm) at Representative Poetry Online
• Matthew Arnold at PoemHunter (63 poems)
• Matthew Arnold at Poetry Nook (153 poems)

Prose

• "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time," by Matthew Arnold

Books

• Works by Matthew Arnold at Internet Archive
• Works by Matthew Arnold at Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• The Poems of Matthew Arnold 1840-1867 at Bartleby.com
• The Letters of Matthew Arnold Digital Edition, at the University of Virginia Press
• Matthew Arnold at Amazon.com

Audio / video

• Matthew Arnold poems at YouTube

About

• Matthew Arnold in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Matthew Arnold at NNDB.
• Matthew Arnold at Poets' Corner (Westminster Abbey)
• Matthew Arnold at Find a Grave
• Critical Introduction by Thomas Humphry Ward
• Matthew Arnold, by G.W.E. Russell, at Project Gutenberg
• Lesson plans for Dover Beach at Web English Teacher

Etc.

• The W.T. Stead Resource Site
• Anonymous (1873). Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day. Illustrated by Frederick Waddy. London: Tinsley Brothers. pp. 136–37. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cartoon_portraits_and_biographical_sketches_of_men_of_the_day/Matthew_Arnold. Retrieved 2011-03-13.