Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 by

George Edward Bateman Saintsbury ( 23 October 1845 - 28 January 1933), was an English writer, literary historian, scholar, critic and wine connoisseur. BIOGRAPHY: Born in Lottery Hall, Southampton, he was educated at King's College School, London, and at Merton College, Oxford where he achieved a first class BA degree in Classical Mods, (1865), and a second class in literae humaniores (1867). He left Oxford in 1868 having failed to obtain a fellowship, and briefly became a master at the Manchester Grammar School, before spending six years in Guernsey as senior classical master of Elizabeth College, where he began his literary career by submitting his first reviews to The Academy. From 1874 until he returned to London in 1876 he was headmaster of the Elgin Educational Institute, with a brief period in 1877 on the Manchester Guardian. For ten years he was actively engaged in journalism, becoming an important member of the staff of the Saturday Review. Some of the critical essays contributed to the literary journals were afterwards collected in his Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 (2 vols., 1890-1895), Essays on French Novelists (1891), Miscellaneous Essays (1892), and Corrected Impressions (1895). In 1895 he became professor of rhetoric and English literature at the University of Edinburgh, a position he held until 1915. He retired to 1A Royal Crescent, Bath, Somerset and died there in 1933. 1] 1A Royal Crescent was the subject of a restoration and renovation programme by the Bath Preservation Trust during 2012 to reincorporate it into 1 Royal Crescent, of which it was the original servants' quarters. It opened to visitors for the first time in 2013. An exhibition celebrating Saintsbury's life was mounted in the house in 2014........ Robert Southey (12 August 1774 - 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets," and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 until his death in 1843. Although his fame has long been eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey's verse still enjoys some popularity. Southey was also a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer. His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson. The last has rarely been out of print since its publication in 1813 and was adapted for the screen in the 1926 British film, Nelson. He was also a renowned scholar of Portuguese and Spanish literature and history, translating a number of works from those two languages into English and writing a History of Brazil (part of his planned History of Portugal, which he never completed) and a History of the Peninsular War. Perhaps his most enduring contribution to literary history is the children's classic The Story of the Three Bears, the original Goldilocks story, first published in Southey's prose collection The Doctor. He also wrote on political issues, which led to a brief, non-sitting, spell as a Tory Member of Parliament.....ect............