Includes bibliographical references and index.

Matthew Arnold (1822-88) was the leading critic and essayist of the Victorian age and the author of several of the period's most haunting poems of melancholy and loss. His work, notably Essays in Criticism and Culture and Anarchy, exerted a decisive influence over subsequent thinking about criticism and culture, and he remains an inescapable reference-point today." "In this perceptive and stylish study, Stefan Collini examines the whole range of Arnold's literary, social, and religious criticism as well as his poetry, placing them in the context of the major intellectual controversies of the nineteenth century. By attending to the distinctive power of Arnold's writing to charm, tease, persuade, and irritate, the book provides a brilliant characterization of the tone and temper of his mind. This edition includes a substantial Afterword which reflects on Arnold's continuing polemical significance and his role in contemporary cultural debate.