Studies in Three Arnold Problems

It is more and more frequently said that we need a critical edition of Matthew Arnold's prose works. Not that a sense of this need is of recent origin. The late E. K. Brown made note of it more than twenty years ago in the Preface to his pioneering Studies in the Text of Matthew Arnold's Prose Works (Paris, 1935); and before that, though with a considerably different emphasis, J. Dover Wilson, in the Editor's Preface to his edition of Culture and Anarchy (Cambridge, 1932), had pointed up the “surprises” which lie in store for readers of the first edition of Arnold's “Essay in Political & Social Criticism” who have known the book only from texts which have incorporated the author's revisions for the second edition of 1875. We now have a fine critical edition of the poetry (ed. Tinker and Lowry, Oxford, 1950), and we are, I think, coming very near to the time when a critical and definitive edition of the prose will be possible. Unpublished letters are being turned up and printed, anonymous contributions are being identified, and we are learning more and more about the developmental history of Arnold's books. In the first part of this article, then, I wish to add some new information and a new speculation or two about the evolution and text of Arnold's major effort at social criticism, Culture and A narchy .