Shakespeare in the Theatrical Criticism of Henry Morley

Summary

Henry Morley (1822–94) is best known as a tireless editor and introducer of the classics of English literature—the 64 volumes of his Universal Library, published between 1883 and 1888, and the 209 volumes of Cassell’s National Library, which appeared between 1886 and 1890, together with other, shorter, series designed to introduce the great (and minor) writers to as large a public as possible. His Tables of English Literature (1870), A First Sketch of English Literature (1873), and the ten completed volumes of his English Writers (1887–95) place him in the same league as the Cowden Clarkes and Charles Knight as a promoter of the study of good literature. His appetite for the rediscovery of unfamiliar books suggests comparison with the labours of the Reverend A. B. Grosart and his army of editing curates. He was a professor of English Language and Literature in the University of London—first at King’s College, later at Queen’s—and earned an honourable place in the history of the rise of English studies and the development of adult education. As a University Extension lecturer he toured the country by train, enduring inconvenience and fatigue in the cause of popular education.