One comfort I have taken from having Leslie Stephen as a predecessor in the Ford Lectureship is confirmation, in the earliest years of the series, that a topic connected to literary criticism may not be wholly scandalous. The Ford Lectures are devoted to ‘British history’ (only in 1994 was the remit thus broadened from ‘English history’), but Stephen was not deterred by any restrictive understanding of that field, confidently titling his lectures ‘English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century’. Discouragingly for me, the published version of his lectures, which appeared under the same title the following year (1904), was not quite up to the standard of his best earlier work, and, more discouraging still, I note, first, that when he was due to deliver them he was exactly the same age as I was at the comparable point; and, second, that a little over a year later he was dead. I say ‘due to deliver them’, because his illness meant that they had to be read in his absence by his nephew, the celebrated liberal historian H. A. L. Fisher, and when facing for the first time the intimidating vastness of the South School in Oxford’s Examination Schools I found myself regretting that this seductive precedent had not become established custom. Nonetheless, it is helpful for my purposes to recall Stephen, and indeed his nephew, since my own topic concerns aspects of the relationships among literary criticism, intellectual history, and what Fisher and others of his generation were used to calling ‘general history’.
While this book had its origins in a set of lectures, the process of revision and amplification has been so extensive that my acknowledgement of those beginnings may risk misrepresenting its character. However, it is right that I should begin by expressing my gratitude to the electors to the Ford Lectureship, both for the initial stimulus and for their warm hospitality. I owe particular thanks to Roy Foster and Steven Gunn for advice and encouragement at crucial moments. For Hilary Term 2017, when the lectures were delivered, I was fortunate to be made a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, which provided an ideal base and congenial company: I particularly thank the Warden, John Vickers, the Dean of Visiting Fellows, Cecilia Heyes, and those Examination and Postdoctoral Fellows who ensured that the term was as memorable for its parties as for its soberer activities.
For support, advice, correction, and distraction I owe thanks to the usual suspects: in addition, the whole script was read (and significantly improved) by Chris Hilliard, Angela Leighton, Ruth Morse, Helen Small, John Thompson, and Ross Wilson. Several colleagues and former students have provided me with information or references; they are thanked at the relevant points below. For practical assistance in checking references, I am indebted to Abi Glen and Jo Shortt-Butler. At Oxford University Press I am grateful to Robert Faber for encouragement at an early stage, and to Cathryn Steele, Lisa Eaton, Hilary Walford, and Andrew Hawkey for their care and professionalism during the process of production.
For access to unpublished material (and, where relevant, permission to quote from it), I am grateful to the following: Cambridge University archives (with special thanks to the archivist, Jacqueline Cox) for records of the Board of Graduate Studies, Cambridge University Library; Random House for the archives of Chatto and Windus, Reading University Special Collections Service; the National Library of Scotland for the papers of H. J. C. Grierson, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; the late Richard Hoggart for the Hoggart Papers, now held at Sheffield University; Ben Knights for material by L. C. Knights, Cambridge University Library; Downing College (with special thanks to the archivist, Jenny Ulph) for the F. R. Leavis Papers, Downing College, Cambridge; Penguin Books for the Penguin Archives, University of Bristol; Bill Noblett for the J. H. Plumb Papers, Cambridge University Library; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin, Texas, for the C. P. Snow Papers; Merryn Williams and the University of Swansea for the Raymond Williams Papers, University of Swansea Library.
Perhaps I should explain, since so much contemporary scholarly practice tends in the opposite direction, that I have for the most part restricted my endnote references to primary sources, citing secondary works only when I have quoted from them or otherwise made direct use of them. This book draws on reading and research carried out over many years, and extensive compilations of scholarly authorities could be assembled in a showy attempt to buttress its claims. But, in my view, such formulaic recitations serve little purpose in most cases, and I have abstained from them here. Finally, I should make clear that, although my engagement with this topic and its central characters is of long standing, the contents of this book are here appearing in print for the first time. The only exceptions are parts of the second half of Chapter 3 (about L. C. Knights) and of the last third of Chapter 5 (about Richard Hoggart); full details of the earlier versions of those two sections are given at the relevant points.