Bücher von Adolphus William Ward

But, in accordance with the taste of his age, which shunned such sheer straightforwardness in poetry, the "Book of the Duchess" contains no further transparent reference to the actual circumstances of the wedded life which had come to so premature an end--for John of Gaunt had married Blanche of Lancaster in 1359;--and an elaborate framework is constructed round the essential theme of the poem. Already, however, the instinct of Chaucer's own poetic genius had taught him the value of personal directness; and, artificially as the course of the poem is arranged, it begins in the most artless and effective fashion with an account given by the poet of his own sleeplessness and its cause.

Published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1882, this biography of Charles Dickens (1812-70) provides a short introduction to the life and works of the most popular author of the Victorian era. Sir Adolphus William Ward (1837-1924), a prominent scholar who taught at the newly founded the University of Manchester and became President of the British Academy, wrote on English literature from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, and translated Curtius' History of Greece. His work complements earlier biographies of the writer who styled himself as 'The Inimitable' and whose influence as a novelist, social commentator and social reformer cannot be overstated. The life is treated chronologically, and a final chapter discusses 'the future of Dickens' fame', concluding that although he has faults as a novelist, his place in the canon of English literature is secure.

This biography of Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) was published in the first series of English Men of Letters in 1879. Its author, Sir Adolphus William Ward (1837-1924), a prominent scholar who became President of the British Academy, wrote on English literature from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, translated Curtius' History of Greece, and was a historian of both Britain and Germany. He approached the task of writing Chaucer's life as a historian rather than as a literary critic, emphasising the archival sources from which information on Chaucer the man, the civil servant and the courtier could be drawn, and placing the life very much in the context of the times. An epilogue discusses the legacy of the 'father of English poetry' to the poets and dramatists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the renewal of interest in Chaucer's works in the nineteenth century.