The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters: English Literary Life since 1800 [Paperback]

John Gross' "The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters" is an intellectual history of the highest order.

Beginning with "the rise of the reviewer" in the first half of the 19th century, this witty and erudite book provides an overview of British literary life from the days of Matthew Arnold and Thomas Carlyle up to the age of T.S. Eliot and George Orwell. Along the way a host of less well known "men of letters" are profiled as well.

Gross also addresses the factors that led to the decline of this species of intellectual, including the cultural disruptions of the Second World War, changes in technology post-war, and the rise of "mass media." He also raises "the question of whether literature hasn't come to count for less in relation to intellectual life as a whole" in our day.

Another significant point raised in the book is the blurring of the line between literary culture and academic culture in the 20th century, and in particular how the rise of the university English department came in many ways to supplant the freestanding literary and critical establishments. On this point, Gross asks: "Isn't there a basic antagonism between the very nature of a university and the very spirit of literature?"

For those who appreciate the eccentric, idiosyncratic spirit of the 19th century's independent literary culture over the hierarchical, elitist, and ideologically uniform outlook of contemporary academia, the question resonates strongly.

This extremely urbane, informative and, for anyone who devotes a greater part of their life to literature, ultimately encouraging book can be decidedly divided into two sections. The first is a lengthy discussion of the influential English men of letters of the Victorian and Edwardian eras and their merits and demerits. Some of the figures are household names (e.g. Matthew Arnold), but the great majority of them, particularly as one moves into the Edwardian era, whilst extremely influential in their day, have sunk into complete oblivion. Gross's style is literate, erudite, yet eminently readable, as these forgotten, often idiosyncratic, devotees to literature return to life for the reader.

The segue between the two sections is best represented by a quote from Chesterton, indicative of the challenges posed to literature and the devotion thereto following the First World War:

"What does the poem `Childe Roland' mean? The only genuine answer to this is, `What does anything mean?' Does the earth mean nothing? Do grey skies and wastes covered with thistles mean nothing? Does an old horse turned out to graze mean nothing? If it does, there is but one further truth to be added - that everything means nothing."

Beginning with Eliot (T.S., not George), Gross ceases to merely inform and elucidate but to fight a rearguard action against the literary constipation of the sort of criticism - and accompanying constipated critics - which begin to come to the fore with Eliot. These well-deserved rebukes to the procrustean brand of literary writing reach a perihelion with his thorough trouncing of F.R. Leavis and his sycophants and intellectual progeny. Gross asks, "How can anyone who tries to keep up with Wordsworthian studies find time to read Wordsworth?" He scornfully dismisses those who would dismiss those who read and write about literature out of innate devotion rather than in search of a pay cheque or editorial approbation thus: "The belittling of the belle lettrist, the person who writes as he pleases, is at bottom a demand for ideological conformity."

And, for all his discouragement concerning the mangling of literature at the hands of academics and "professionals," Gross finishes the Epilogue with a passage any long-suffering Amazon reviewer cannot help but delight in repeating:

"In a world which favours experts and specialists, this means that the critic is increasingly liable to be dismissed as a dilettante or resented as a trespasser. But if his uncertain status often puts him at a disadvantage, it also makes possible, ideally, the breadth and independence which are his ultimate justification. In this sense, at least, however archaic it may seem in other aspects, the idea of the man of letters has a place in any healthy literary tradition."

It's rather nice to have a pat on the back once every so often.

This outstanding book treats, in Gross's words, "the role of literature in public life, and the social context of criticism" (p. xiv), from the founding of the Edinburgh Review (1802) down to F.R. Leavis and Scrutiny. In the hands of an academic, this might have become dreary indeed, but Gross, himself something of a man of letters, turns out a book rich not only with information but with insight - literary, but also historical, political, even psychological - and with humor. He has fun with many of the minor writers who make up his story, but he also handles major authors - e.g., Carlyle, Arnold, Eliot - with a deftness many professional scholars should aspire to.

And, without pulling punches, he is always fair, sure to give credit where credit is due, not only where he might plausibly anticipate pushback, as with a canonical author (e.g., Arnold) or with a still-living contemporary (e.g., Leavis, d. 1978), but even in the cases of forgotten second-order writers. Thus, in encapsulating the bilious critic Churton Collins, whose quirks (e.g., a fascination with graveyards) "plainly argue a severely disturbed personality" which found its outlet in hostile book-reviewing, Gross carefully notes that "this is not to say that his more damaging reviews were merely `neurotic.' On the contrary, most of the errors to which he drew attention ought not to have been let pass" (p. 176). Gross shows as much when he uses Collins's (negative) reviews in discussing Edmund Gosse and Walter Raleigh - this sort of cross-referencing pops up throughout the book, evidence of Gross's mastery of his material.

This even-handedness also adds, for me at least, to the pleasure of the humor that Gross extracts from his subject. One never senses that he is sneering, having a laugh at the benighted souls unfortunate enough to have been born before our own times; but rather that he is holding up absurdities that the participants themselves might have recognized. Thus, after citing early on a passage in Thackeray's Pendennis in which an older writer confesses to the young hero that he is, in fact, "a member of `the Corporation of the Goosequill - of the Press, my boy'" (p. 22), Gross later suggests that the very serious Mills (James and J.S.), although they might deign to practice journalism in its higher forms, would not likely describe themselves, "in however mellow a moment, as a member of the Corporation of the Goosequill" (p. 37).

Or in discussing the complexity of Arnold Bennett, Gross carefully introduces his debut novel (A Man from the North, 1898) and its pursuit of "the `high aesthetic line,'" its "grey, muted realism which one respects rather than admires," its reception by no less than Joseph Conrad as the work of an "uncompromising artistic conscience" - all of this tending to raise the question of whether such a refined temperament could flourish in the commercial publishing environment of the Edwardian age. And, "the quickest way to dispel any such illusion would have been to glance at the other book which Bennett published in 1898, Journalism for Women: A Practical Guide" (p. 212). For me, this works, largely because of Gross's readiness to acknowledge Bennett's talent and even importance as an author ("He is a master of the middle range, almost unsurpassed at showing how everything goes on as usual and nothing remains the same" (p. 215)). I laughed out loud at the juxtaposition, and I suspect Bennett might have as well.

Gross's handling of minor details such as these - his selection, his judgment, his timing - is just an indicator of his skill as a writer. This is probably an excess of zeal, but I would almost recommend this book to students, or indeed anyone, as a model of good writing, of handling complex facts and ideas with clarity and style. The result is a very readable book that could give pleasure, I think, even to someone with only a tenuous interest in the period or the subject.