A Frenchman explains the English through their books
Hippolyte Taine argued that literature grows from historical circumstances, social environment and national culture, not from authors alone. This is the five-volume 1873 edition.
The story
Hippolyte Taine was a French critic who believed that literature could be explained, not only admired. In his history of English literature he treated books as the products of the history, society and national character that surrounded their authors, and he read England’s writers as evidence about England itself. That attempt to bring a system of explanation to culture made it one of the notable works of nineteenth-century criticism.
For French readers it offered a full-scale account of English letters seen from across the Channel; for English-speaking readers now it is a chance to see their own literary past through foreign eyes. The text is in French. This set is the third edition, revised and enlarged, published in Paris by Hachette in five volumes in 1873.
The five volumes are bound in half leather with marbled boards, and they are worn. Photographs show Volume IV with much of the leather gone from its spine and Volume II with a chipped head; the edges are rubbed throughout. The hinges and the leaves inside have not been checked.
Details
- Date
- 1873
- Publisher
- Librairie Hachette et Cie, Paris
- Edition
- Troisième édition revue et augmentée
- Condition
- Five half-leather/marbled-board volumes, worn. Prior photographs show Vol IV major leather loss at spine, Vol II chipped headcap, generally rubbed edges. Internal collation and hinge strength unverified. Prior Johann Hellqvist Stockholm binder label attribution to verify separately if material.
