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Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

LINKS

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=89

This link connects you to the Academy of American Poets. Here you will find an exhibit on Matthew Arnold including a biography, online primary texts, criticism, bibliographic information, and external links.

http://65.107.211.206/arnold/arnoldov.html

This link connects you to the Victorian Web entry on Matthew Arnold. Here you will find an extensive archive of primary and secondary works covering Arnold's writings in terms of major themes and patterns of imagery, as well as the political contexts, social movements, and intellectual backgrounds defining the poet's era.

BIOGRAPHY

The Victorian English poet Matthew Arnold was born at Laleham on the Thames, Middlesex. He received his education at Winchester, Rugby, and Balliol College, Oxford. Early on, Arnold showed promise as a poet winning prizes for his poem "Alaric at Rome" at Rugby and the Newdigate Prize at Oxford for "Cromwell, A Prize Poem." Before becoming private secretary to Lord Lanscowne in 1847, Arnold traveled in France where he met the novelist George Sand. In 1851 Arnold was appointed inspector of schools, which became a lifelong vocation and enabled him to marry Frances Lucy Wightman. Arnold's literary career began in 1849 with his first volume of verse The Strayed Reveler and Other Poems, followed by Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems (1852), Poems, Second Series (1855), and New Poems (1867). Arnold's reputation rests as much on his work as a literary and cultural critic as on his published poetry. Throughout his career in volumes such as Essays in Criticism (1865) and Culture and Anarchy (1869), Arnold sought what he described as "the pursuit of total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world." This version of high culture was later disputed in cultural criticism by critics such as Raymond Williams who redefined culture in terms of a "particular way of life" which, he said, "expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning, but also in institutions and ordinary behaviour." Beginning in 1883, Arnold received an annual pension of 250 pounds per year conferred by William Gladstone, which allowed him to travel widely including a lecture tour to the United States. He returned for another visit in 1886 to visit his daughter who had married an American. Matthew Arnold died two years later in Liverpool.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Gaffney, Kathleen McGovern. Matthew Arnold, Priest of Culture: A Study of Arnold's Religious Criticism. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 1990.

Hamilton, Ian. A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold. Great Britian: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1998.

Machann, Clinton. Matthew Arnold: A Literary Life. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.

Mazzeno, Laurence W. Matthew Arnold: The Critical Legacy. Rochester: Camden House, 1999.

Murray, Nicolas. A Life of Matthew Arnold. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996.

Pratt, Linda Ray. Matthew Arnold Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 2000.

Schneider, Mary W. Poetry in the Age of Democracy: The Literary Criticism of Matthew Arnold. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989.

Stone, Donald David. Communications with the Future: Matthew Arnold in Dialogue. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 1997.

SECONDARY SOURCES BY CHAPTER