Literary studies, volume 1 (of 2)

"Literary studies, volume 1 (of 2)" by Walter Bagehot is a collection of literary essays and criticism with a biographical memoir written in the late 19th century. The volume brings together Bagehot’s portraits of leading English authors with political and biographical appendices, framed by Richard Holt Hutton’s prefatory memoir. Expect historically grounded, psychologically alert criticism that blends literature, politics, and style, delivered with wit and clarity.

The opening of the volume presents brief editorial notices for the new edition, a table of contents, and then Richard Holt Hutton’s substantial memoir of Bagehot. Hutton portrays him as more than an economist: a buoyant, imaginative, keenly detached observer whose humor strengthened his judgment. He traces Bagehot’s Somerset banking roots, formative education at University College London under De Morgan and others, and early fascinations with poetry, philosophy, and theology. Pivotal influences and episodes include friendship with A. H. Clough (tempering haste and will), the provocative Paris letters on the coup d’état, and the decision to choose banking and the Economist over the Bar. The memoir sketches the making of Bagehot’s major ideas—animated moderation in politics, the “cake of custom” in social evolution, a theistic reading of evolution compatible with free will, and a vivid view of capitalists as the strategists of commerce—alongside his near-misses in Parliament and lively conversation. Overall, the beginning sets the essays in context by offering a concise, character-rich life of their author.