Includes index.

A history of English criticism, which was originally the English chapter of Saintsbury’s monumental three volumes a history of criticism and literary taste in Europe (1900-04), was published separately in 1911 as a revised, adapted and updated edition, complete in itself. The book is the first of its kind and is thus of great historical importance. The history of English criticism, as Saintsbury sees it, passes through three distinct stages:
(i) the initial stage of Elizabethan criticism tentative, hesitating and scattered trying to assimilate the numerous critical ideas scattered throughout the classical European literatures
(ii) the neo-classic period starting with Dryden and continuing beyond the beginning of the nineteenth century and then
(iii) The stage of modified or modernist criticism. It is, however, a continuous process with rise and fall of various schools, theories, movements and attitudes etc.
The first chapter examines the classical legacy which provides the relevant critical framework against which the development of English criticism must be seen. In the subsequent chapters professor Sainsbury discusses at length the contributions of Elizabethan critics, Dryden and his contemporaries, the eighteenth century critics, the English precursors of romanticism, the romantic critics and the critics during the period from 1860 to 1900. The conclusion neatly sums up the general plan of the book and the findings of professor Saintsbury, the first academic historian of universal criticism. Though profoundly luminous and sharply insightful the book makes a delightful reading mainly because of the vigour of the overbearing character of Saintsbury who always transmits his opinions with gusto and invites his readers to share his views, his happiness and hearty preferences, his strong likes and dislikes. The book is a must for any student of literary criticism.