Stephen Delphi Collected Works of Leslie Stephen Illustrated

1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-80170-309-3
Verlag: Delphi Publishing Ltd
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 5347 Seiten

Reihe: Delphi Series Sixteen

The father of Virginia Woolf, Sir Leslie Stephen was a celebrated critic, historian, biographer and Ethical movement activist. His most enduring legacy is 'The Dictionary of National Biography', which he edited from 1882 to 1891, contributing over 370 biographies. Stephen's prose is noted for its intellectual depth, 'rigorous manual quality' and discerning critical observations. He often criticised the 'monomania' of biographers that focused on minute genealogical details at the expense of vital historical problems. For Stephen, a biographer's duty was to extract the essence of a person from the 'clutter of their existence'. His pioneering works had a transformative impact on the art of biography writing, moving the genre away from idealised portraits toward a more rigorous, evidence-based and humanistic approach. This eBook presents Stephen's collected works, with numerous illustrations, many rare texts, concise introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)

* Beautifully illustrated with images relating to Stephen's life and works
* Concise introductions to the major texts
* 18 books, with individual contents tables
* Includes Stephen's rare first book 'The 'Times' on the American War' - available in no other collection
* Features many rare non-fiction works appearing for the first time in digital publishing, including seminal studies of George Eliot and Thomas Hobbes
* Images of how the books were first published, giving your eReader a taste of the original texts
* Excellent formatting of the texts
* Includes Stephen's contributions to 'The Dictionary of National Biography'
* Easily locate the essays you want to read
* Features three biographical works - discover Stephen's literary life
* Ordering of texts into chronological order

CONTENTS:

The Books
The 'Times' on the American War (1865)
Sketches from Cambridge (1865)
The Playground of Europe (1871)
Essays on Free Thinking and Plain Speaking (1873)
Hours in a Library (1874)
Samuel Johnson (1878)
Alexander Pope (1880)
Swift (1882)
An Agnostic's Apology and Other Essays (1893)
The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1895)
Social Rights and Duties (1896)
Contributions to 'The Dictionary of National Biography' (1885-1900)
Studies of a Biographer (1898-1902)
The English Utilitarians (1900)
George Eliot (1902)
English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century (1904)
Hobbes (1904)
Contributions to Other Periodicals

The Biographies
Sir Leslie Stephen (1911) by Thomas Seccombe
Principles of Biography (1911) by Sidney Lee
Leslie Stephen (1912) by Sidney Lee

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stephen, Leslie

Leseproben

I. — THE “TIMES” ON AMERICAN AFFAIRS.

IN DISCUSSING THE causes of the Crimean war, Mr. Kinglake gives a prominent place to the agency of the Times. He does not decide whether the Times was the master or the slave of the British people, whether it prompted their decisions, or merely divined them by a happy instinct The coincidence of sentiment between the Times and common sentiment is explicable on either hypothesis. A story, however, is related by Mr. Kinglake, which, if it is to be accepted as authentic, would tend to clear up the mystery. The Times, he says, used to employ a shrewd, idle clergyman, whose duty was to hang about in places of public resort, to listen neither to the pre-eminently foolish nor to the pre-eminently wise, but to wait till some common and obvious thought was repeated in many places by many average men all unacquainted with each other. That thought was the prize he sought for, and brought home to his employers. Once in possession of this knowledge, they again employed able writers to enforce this opinion by arguments certain to fall upon willing ears. The Times was meanwhile regarded by ordinary men and women as a mysterious entity, a concrete embodiment of the power known in the abstract as “public opinion.” As Mr. Kinglake says, men prefixed to its name such adjectives as showed “that they regarded the subject of their comments in the light of an active sentient being, having a life beyond the span of mortal men, gifted with reason, armed with a cruel strength, endued with some of the darkest of human passions, but clearly “liable hereafter to the direst penalty of sin.” They supposed it, I may add, to be in possession of a political knowledge profounder than the knowledge of any private individual, if not than the knowledge of statesmen, and acquiesced in its arrogating the right of speaking in the name of the English people.

It is, however, notorious that no part of the power wielded by the Times is derived from any respect for its consistency or its unselfish advocacy of principles. And this follows naturally if we accept as substantially accurate the account given by Mr. Kinglake of the process by which its opinions are determined. A thought common to the great mass of the educated English classes must in all cases be a tolerably obvious one: if it refers to domestic matters which are familiar in all their bearings to the majority of educated men, it will probably be marked by shrewd commonsense; when thousands of Englishmen agree in thinking that the suffrage is unfairly distributed, or that trade is oppressively taxed, they are probably right. Their opinions are, at least, the result of an operation which may, without a palpable misnomer, be described as thought. In such cases, the Times, in concentrating their opinions into one focus, will adopt a policy which, if not resting upon very exalted considerations, is at least dictated by homely good sense, and not marked by utter ignorance. But the case is widely different when we come to foreign politics. English ignorance in such matters is proverbial. The name of America five years ago called up to the ordinary English mind nothing but a vague cluster of associations, compounded of Mrs. Trollope, Martin Chuzzlewit, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A few flying reminiscences of disputes about territory, and a few commonplaces about democracy, made up what we were pleased to call our opinions. Most people were as ignorant of American history since the revolution as of the history of the Chinese empire, and of American geography as of the geography of Central Africa. Our utterances on American affairs might have the external form of judgment; they were, in substance, mere random assertions about unknown quantities. Now, the Times, by the law of its being, would have to be the mere echo of these sham decisions. The honest British public confidently laid down the law, like a Dogberry giving judgment in a Chancery suit, and the Times stood by as a skilful reporter to dress its blundering dogmas in the language of political philosophy. The British public talked about “Yankee snobbishness;” the Times translated its words into solemn nothings about “American democracy,” and the public thought it had said rather a good thing.

I wish to trace some of the consequences of this peculiar process, by which a newspaper transmutes our rubbish into a kind of Britannia metal, and obtains our sympathy because we have ourselves provided the raw material, and our admiration because it is worked up into such sparkling tinsel. The very first necessity for this dexterous shuffling is an affectation of absolute infallibility; a true account of the Times would run like Prince Henry’s description of Poins, “Thou art a blessed fellow to think as every man thinks, never a man’s thought in the world keeps the roadway better than thine.” But it would never suit our modern Poins to be praised for merely keeping the roadway; he must be credited with also pointing it out; and, to substantiate his claims of guiding the English people instead of merely divining the path which they will take, he must naturally affect more than mortal wisdom. His claim to be followed is that he is always right. And the à posteriori proof that the Times has been right harmonizes beautifully with this à priori claim to confidence. Everybody, it says, agrees with us; therefore we are right; everybody always has agreed with us, therefore we have been always right. The Times, like the figure-head of a ship, always leads public opinion; and, as we have always been following it, it must have been going in the same direction. The beauty of this is that the Times in arrogating infallibility and consistency contrives to insinuate delicate flattery to its constituents. No one can deny a claim to consistency founded upon perfect agreement with his own past opinions.

So far, then, the Times is only to be accused of passing off false gems for true, affecting all the time to be a profound and an honest connoisseur. But a little reflection will show, what this pamphlet is intended to illustrate by a striking example — namely, the danger to which this course exposes us. In our ignorance of the cause of some great foreign convulsion, we judge of it partly by the way in which it affects our interests, and partly in accordance with certain traditional prejudices. There must be something radically wrong in a war which affects our supplies of cotton; and we cannot credit a race who chew tobacco and wear bowie knives with any heroic virtues. Judgments really determined by shallow prejudices can only be supported by constant perversion of the facts. Ignorant people, even though they affect to be infallible, can pervert facts with genuine unconsciousness. They deduce their premises from their conclusions without the least guess that they are illogical. It is only necessary to fix the attention upon the set of facts that make for the side they have taken, and to shut their eyes to all others. Thus the next step of our infallible expounder of national opinions is to lay down authoritatively a theory, intended not so much to be accurate, as to serve as some justification for that which has come by a kind of accident to be the popular opinion. The evil which follows from this is obvious. The American naturally believes that the Times is, in fact, the authorized mouthpiece of English sentiment. He credits it with all the mysterious knowledge which it claims to possess, and assumes that in listening to it he hears the matured opinions of the most educated and reflective minds of England. Finding a complete perversion of his case, he naturally again attributes it to malice rather than ignorance. He cannot believe that such pretended wisdom covers so much emptiness; and he attributes to wilful falsehood what is at worst a desire to flatter its readers, overriding a love of severe historical truth. Our American thus assumes very falsely, though very naturally, that the English people hate him, abuse him, refuse to see his merits, and knowingly accept the vilest caricatures of his purpose; he does not understand that we have stumbled into mistakes, and that our blunders have been pampered and exaggerated by our flatterers. He would naturally reply by abuse to our abuse; even if his own press had not already acted with as much recklessness and want of principle as the Times. And so the good feeling, for which should all wish, is hopelessly destroyed for a time.

In explaining the process more in detail, I hope I may render some slight service towards producing a better understanding. I cannot see the force of a late piteous appeal of the Times “to let bygones be bygones.” It is sufficiently impudent after abusing a man incessantly, and being mistaken in all you have said, to request him to forget all about it. “I have been spitting upon your Jewish gaberdine, calling you misbeliever, cutthroat dog, and other pretty names for four years; but now — I freely forgive you.”

This, however, I leave the Times to reconcile with its own lofty sense of dignity. I wish bygones to be bygones, as between the English and American peoples, for I think that each has misunderstood the other. The most effective way of securing this result would be to throw our Jonahs overboard, to upset the credit of the mischief-makers who have interfered between us, and to withdraw our countenance from the blustering impostor who has been speaking all this time in our name without any due authority. Two men sometimes quarrel because each has been barked at by his neighbour’s cur, and fancies that his neighbour has set it on. The best way of making peace is to prove that, after all, it is nothing...