George Saintsbury
George Edward Bateman Saintsbury (1845-1933) was a prominent English journalist, editor, and professor known for his contributions to literary criticism and history. Born in Southampton, he was educated at King's College and Merton College, Oxford, and began his career in teaching before transitioning to literary journalism. Saintsbury wrote for notable publications, including the Manchester Guardian and the Tory Saturday Review, where he gained recognition for his extensive knowledge of both English and French literature.
His influential works include "A Primer of French Literature," "A Short History of French Literature," and "A Short History of English Literature," as well as a comprehensive three-volume series titled "A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe." While he was respected for his wide-ranging expertise, his writing style was often critiqued for being meandering and overly self-indulgent. Despite these criticisms, Saintsbury emphasized the aesthetics of literary style over content and became an important figure in the development of comparative literature.
Throughout his lifetime, he maintained a strong passion for literature, which he viewed as a source of pleasure and enrichment. Although some of his works have faced harsh reassessment since his passing, his legacy endures as a testament to the value of critical engagement with texts. His only enduring work in print long after his death is "Notes on a Cellar-Book," reflecting his appreciation for the finer pleasures in life.
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George Saintsbury
Writer
- Born: October 23, 1845
- Birthplace: Southampton, England
- Died: January 28, 1933
- Place of death: Bath, England
Biography
Prolific English journalist, editor, and professor George Edward Bateman Saintsbury is best known for his literary histories, which are considered precursors to contemporary comparative literature due to their extremely broad scope. He was recognized during his lifetime for the range of his expertise and familiarity with texts both obscure and renowned, particularly from English and French literature of all historical periods. Although the quality of Saintsbury’s own prose is frequently criticized as meandering and overly parenthetical, as a literary critic he gave priority to the aesthetics of style, valuing form over content, even when the content was at odds with his marked personal conservatism.
Saintsbury was born in Southhampton, England, in 1845, the son of a railroad superintendent. He attended King’s College in London and Merton College at Oxford. Saintsbury taught grammar school, first in Manchester, and then on the Channel Island community of Guernsey. He followed these teaching positions with a long career as a literary journalist, writing for the Manchester Guardian and other newspapers, including the then-Tory Saturday Review, where he served as an assistant editor. In 1895, against stiff competition, he received an appointment as the Regius Professor of English at the University of Edinburgh.
Saintsbury published his first significant work of literary criticism, A Primer of French Literature, in 1880 while he was working as a journalist. He had begun extensive readings in French literature, consuming, on average, a novel every morning, during his time at Guernsey. He wrote numerous essays and reviews of French literature, focusing particularly on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire and eventually publishing three volumes in as many years: A Primer of French Literature in 1880, A Short History of French Literature in 1882, and Specimens of French Literature from Villon to Hugo in 1883.
Around the same time, he began writing on English literature, publishing a critical work on John Dryden in 1881. Over the next fifteen years, Saintsbury would publish prolifically on all periods of Western literature, also writing political journalism and satire on British politics from an extremely conservative, Tory and High Anglican vantage point. Sainstbury loved the work- a-day effort of journalism and thrived during this period, establishing himself both as the foremost British authority on French literature and as a capable and reliable source of readable, entertaining, and professional magazine copy.
Upon receiving his appointment at Edinburgh, however, Saintsbury was pressured by the faculty, who disdained his journalism background, to give up review and essay work in favor of teaching and academic publication. He turned all his attentions to literary history, quickly publishing A Short History of English Literature (1898), a complement to his first French volume, and following it up between 1900 and 1904 with his monumental, three-volume survey of the Western literary tradition. Called A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day, the work entrenched Saintsbury’s reputation and laid out the principles of aesthetic criticism which he consistently followed throughout his life and career.
Saintsbury continued to publish extensively in literary history throughout his tenure at Edinburgh, returning to opinion, essays, and memoir after his retirement. He died at his home in Bath, England, in 1933. Since his death, scholars have savaged his writing for its pure aestheticism—his inability to historicize his work and his lack of theoretical rigor. A short work on the pleasures of wine, Notes on a Cellar-Book, which he published in 1920, was the only one of his hundreds of publications to be in print twenty-five years after his death. However, Saintsbury’s work is consistently a paean to the value and pleasure of voracious reading, a pastime for which he had an insatiable devotion.