Harrison, A: Cultural Production of Matthew Arnold

"This authoritatively, often handsomely written set of essays reflects several decades' analytic rumination on Arnold the man and the writer-the figure who made himself by poetry and then, decisively, by essayistic prose the leading Victorian influence on literary criticism as it was practiced and discussed in the twentieth-century Anglophone world." "(A)n impressive analysis of a subtle, learned, and earnest thinker." (Choice) "Antony H. Harrison's new book on Matthew Arnold is significant because it apparently represents the culmination of his work on this Victorian poet and critic over the past two decades.... Harrison continues to employ a historicist cultural studies methodology, pointing to Pierre Bourdieu as an especially important influence.... ." (Victorian Studies)