Clearly, for many of the highly productive and lengthily reviewed nineteenth- and twentiethcentury writers, there exists an enormous body of material and in these cases the volume editors have made a selection of the most important views, significant for their intrinsic critical worth or for their representative quality-perhaps even registering incomprehension! For earlier writers, notably pre-eighteenth century, the materials are much scarcer and the historical period has been extended, sometimes far beyond the writer’s lifetime, in order to show the inception and growth of critical views which were initially slow to appear.
BEST SOMERSET MAUGHAM SHORT STORIES SERIES
The separate volumes in the Critical Heritage Series present a record of this early criticism. Evidence of this kind helps us to understand the writer’s historical situation, the nature of his immediate reading-public, and his response to these pressures. On one side we learn a great deal about the state of criticism at large and in particular about the development of critical attitudes towards a single writer at the same time, through private comments in letters, journals or marginalia, we gain an insight upon the tastes and literary thought of individual readers of the period. General Editor’s Preface The reception given to a writer by his contemporaries and nearcontemporaries is evidence of considerable value to the student of literature. ISBN 2-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 5-3 (Print Edition)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data ISBN 9-9 Master e-book ISBN No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Compilation, introduction, notes and index © 1987 Anthony Curtis & John Whitehead All rights reserved. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer’s death.įirst published in 1987 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries.
Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer’s work and its place within a literary tradition. The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. W.SOMERSET MAUGHAM: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE
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