Princeton Legacy Library Journey Through Despair 1880-1914 Book 2245 (Paperback)

English literary culture from the death of Thomas Carlyle to the First World War was paradoxical and diverse. In literature it was a time of confusion and a nervous often frenzied search for new terms on which the imagination could live. Professor Lester shows that the literary culture of the period moved steadily from a suspicion that the old bases of significant imaginative life were indefensible to a widespread conviction that they had collapsed. His book is not an exercise in literary criticism. Rather it is an attempt to discover the geist of an age to provide a synthesis for the years 1880-1914. His overriding concern is: What is the primary force which so unsettles disperses and disorients the imaginative experience of this period? Originally published in 1968. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.