The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica

by Inc. Encyclopaedia Britannica

Contributors

The student of literature, like the student of painting, finds it as necessary to examine the great examples of the art as to study the laws which guide the artist, for the history of their development, and he will find that the articles which discuss literature in the Britannica are themselves literature, models of the form of artistic expression which they describe. A list of these contributors who deal with literary topics might, indeed, easily be mistaken for a list of such articles on the great contemporary writers as the student would most desire to read. Among these contributors are, for example: Edmund Gosse, Theodore Watts-Dunton, Swinburne, A. C. Benson, John Morley, Austin Dobson, Arthur Symons, J. Addington Symonds, Frederic Harrison, Walter Besant, William Sharp (“Fiona Macleod”), Professor George Saintsbury, Sir Arthur T. Quiller-Couch (“Q”), William Archer, Israel Gollancz, Robert Louis Stevenson, Andrew Lang, Sir Leslie Stephen, E. V. Lucas, Arthur Waugh, Mrs. Craigie (“John Oliver Hobbes”), Alice Meynell, Mrs. Humphry Ward, and—among American names,—George E. Woodberry, Henry Van Dyke, Edward Everett Hale, T. W. Higginson, Brander Matthews, W. P. Trent, Charles Eliot Norton, Charles William Eliot, George W. Cable, Lyman Abbott, Edmund Clarence Stedman, John Burroughs, Thomas Davidson, Horace E. Scudder, and Charles F. Richardson.

Before discussing the articles in which these and many other distinguished contributors deal with various aspects of literature, attention may be directed to the treatment of religious literature in the Britannica. The Bible is the subject of a separate chapter in this Guide on Bible Study, to which the reader is also referred for the whole literature of Biblical criticism. Religious literature based upon the Bible is discussed in the articles Liturgy (Vol. 16, p. 795), by the Rev. F. E. Warren; Sermon (Vol. 24, p. 673), by Edmund Gosse, and Hymns (Vol. 14, p. 181), by Lord Selborne, equivalent to 35 pages of this Guide. The medieval miracle plays and mysteries, presenting incidents from Scripture, are described in the section on the Medieval Drama (Vol. 8, p. 497) of the article Drama. On the literature of other religions, see the chapter For Ministers.

General Articles

The student of literature in general may begin his course of reading with the article Literature (Vol. 16, p. 783), a concise critical summary by Dr. James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, professor of Spanish language and literature, Liverpool University, best known as the editor of Cervantes. Read, after the article Literature, the same contributor’s article Translation (Vol. 27, p. 183). The student who does not wish to approach literature from the philosophic side need not read the articles Aesthetics and Fine Arts; but even such a one should read the article Style (Vol. 25, p. 1055), by Edmund Gosse, essayist, poet, biographer and librarian of the House of Lords, and the article Prose (Vol. 22, p. 450), by the same contributor.

There is a well-known and perfectly authentic anecdote of Edmund Gosse’s predecessor as librarian of the House of Lords, who was once asked in the course of a newspaper symposium on education, “What were the principal factors in your education?” He replied by putting second only to his university training “the articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and in the Athenaeum by Theodore Watts-Dunton.” Certainly the student will be well repaid by repeated study and analysis of Watts-Dunton’s article Poetry (Vol. 21, p. 877; equivalent to 45 pages of this Guide). The same author’s articles Sonnet (Vol. 25, p. 414), Matthew Arnold (Vol. 2, p. 635), and Wycherley (Vol. 28, p. 863) should be studied with the article Poetry as supplementing his literary philosophy.

The greatest of literary forms is amply represented by the space and the authority given to it in the Britannica. The article Drama (Vol. 8, p. 475; equivalent to 225 pages of this Guide) is mainly the work of Prof. A. W. Ward, master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, editor of the Cambridge History of English Literature and of the Cambridge Modern History; but some parts of the article are by William Archer, the dramatic critic, and by Auguste Filon (“Pierre Sandrié”). This elaborate article should be supplemented by the short article Comedy (Vol. 6, p. 759) and by the biographical and critical sketches of the great dramatists.

Among the many other articles in the Britannica on the forms of literature are: Satire (Vol. 24, p. 228), by Richard Garnett, late librarian British Museum, with which the student may well combine the articles Humour and Irony, the articles Ballade, Ballads (Lang), Bucolics, Pastoral, Cento, Chant Royal (with Gosse’s first English chant royal, “The Praise of Dionysus,” transcribed in full), Descriptive Poetry, Elegy, Epic Poetry, Epithalamium, Heroic Verse, Idyl, Limerick, Lyrical Poetry, Macaronics, National Anthems, Ode, Ottava Rima, Pantun, Rime Royal, Rondeau, Rondel, Sestett, Sestina, Song, Triolet, Vers De Société, Vilanelle, Virelay, and—a few of the prose forms, Biography, Conte, Criticism, Epistle, Essay, Euphuism, Novel, Pamphlet, Picaresque Novel, Romance, Tale, Tract,—nearly all these being by Edmund Gosse. Two articles of the utmost importance are Dictionary and Encyclopaedia. Read the general article Rhetoric.

Periodical Publications

Periodical publications, especially those in the English and French languages, have contained a great part of the best literary criticism of miscellaneous essays published since the first French review appeared in 1665 and since the first English review, consisting wholly of original matter, was established in London in 1710. The latter was indebted to France not only for its model, but for its editor, who was a French Protestant refugee. Benjamin Franklin founded the first American monthly, the Philadelphian General Magazine in 1741. The article Periodicals (Vol. 21, p. 151), by H. R. Tedder, librarian of the Athenaeum Club, London, contains separate sections on the reviews and magazines of England, the United States, Canada, South Africa, West India and the British Crown Colonies, India and Ceylon, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Russia, Bohemia, Hungary and Japan.