Introduction

Ignorance is a soft cushion, and it is just as well that we critics and would-be critics of nineteenth century literature are ignorant or we should be uncomfortable. Our growing interest in exploring that literature could not go on so happily if we had the suspicion-which the present volume confirms-that our red-hot views are those of at least some of our great-grandparents. Our discoveries are rediscoveries. The great writings of the mid-nineteenth century received in their own day the criticism they merited, criticism as sound and spirited as any they are ever likely to receive. One of the interests, then, of the present volume, and of any that are made on the same principle, is that it brings to light those ‘forgotten worthies’, the critics of the great literature of their time who were anonymous and obscure, and that it suggests the original context of those whose names are known and honoured. Some of the forgotten worthies we have brought to remembrance are American, which in the mid-nineteenth century still mainly meant New England. Thackeray’s writings were known there almost as soon as in England, and indeed it was there that some of his series of periodical writings first became books-at this date and for long after there was no international copyright law. It was only after Vanity Fair (1847-8), that he was acclaimed in America, and nothing more of his was much noticed till after his first lecture tour in 1852-3. We have included in our selection three prominent American reviews of his novels, and they will perhaps encourage American scholars to go further than they yet have in detailed study of his American reception. Thackeray made his first lecture tour in America ten years after Dickens visited there and was greatly preferred because of his amiability, which tempered the fear that the author of the novels might be too horribly critical of everything he came up against. We may also note here that many of Thackeray’s writings were soon translated into French and German, not surprisingly-their ethos, unlike that of Dickens, was from the start as much European as English. One of our

American reviewers hoped that the import of Thackeray’s sort of civilization would not spoil the American sort, and his fear of Thackeray’s must have been very like his fear of the European. A decade or two later Henry James was to be less fearfully receptive of both Thackeray and Europe.