George Edward Bateman Saintsbury

George Edward Bateman Saintsbury , 1845-1933, English critic and historian. His many works on English and French literature, notable for their breadth of knowledge and spirited style, include A Short History of English Literature (1898), A History of Criticism (1900-1904), and A History of the French Novel (1917-19). He also wrote biographies of Dryden (1881), Sir Walter Scott (1897), Matthew Arnold (1899), and others. From 1895 to 1915 he was professor of rhetoric and English literature at Edinburgh.

Saintsbury, George Edward Bateman (1845–1933), became professor of English literature and rhetoric at Edinburgh in 1895, a post he held for 20 years. He contributed numerous articles to the Fortnightly Review, Pall Mall Gazette, and other journals, and introduced many editions of prose and poetry. His larger works include A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1896), A Short History of English Literature (1898, reprinted 1960), The History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe (1900–4), A History of English Prosody (1906–10), and books on Sir Walter Scott (1897), Matthew Arnold (1898), and A History of the French Novel (1917–19). Saintsbury was a connoisseur of wine and the success of his Notes on a Cellarbook (1920) led to the founding of the Saintsbury Club. He remains a doyen of Victorian taste in literature, but his hedonistic approach to literary criticism, based on style rather than on content, is no longer in favour.