Revival: George Saintsbury: The Memorial Volume (1945)

Book excerpt: This Memorial Volume is being published to mark the centenary year of George Saintbury's birth. It contains essays, hitherto uncollected in book form, on authors such as Dryden, Herrick, Ben Jonson, Browning, Coleridge; studies of Carlyle, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Shelley, Disraeli; and papers on subjects that range from "The Qualities of Wine" to "Eighteenth Century Poetry". There is a biographical memoir of Saintsbury by Professor A. Blyth Webster and personal portraits by Professor Oliver Elton, Sir Herbert Grierson, and others. Compiled under the co-editorship of Dr John W. Oliver and Mr Augustus Muir (who were students of Saintsbury's at the University of Edinburgh) and of Dr A. M. Clark, lecturer in the English Department at that University, this volume will be welcomed by the steadily increasing number of those who appreciate the richness of Saintsbury's personality and the value of his work as a critic and literary historian.