Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain

by Stefan Collini

The study and teaching of English literature is generally regarded as one of the central disciplines in the modern university, yet for much of its history it struggled to gain academic legitimacy and was frequently derided as 'a soft option'. Its early professors responded by emphasizing its scholarly character, foregrounding philology and literary history in ways that marked the syllabus far into the twentieth century.

Stefan Collini provides here the first full account of the discipline's development from its late-eighteenth-century beginnings up to the early 1960s. Paying special attention to institutional settings, he challenges numerous assumptions about the character of universities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the detailed exploration of syllabuses, exam papers, and other institutional records, the impact of literary criticism is revealed to be later and more partial than is commonly assumed. Rather than seeing the early teaching of English literature as 'a substitute for religion' or 'a means to soften class conflict', Collini emphasizes the role of ideals of learnedness and scholarship, as well as of external factors such as opportunities for employment in the civil service and secondary school-teaching. There are full discussions of the parts played by such figures as John Churton Collins, A.C. Bradley, George Saintsbury, and Walter Raleigh, together with sceptical analyses of the decisive significance usually attributed to Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, and F.R. Leavis. Separate chapters are devoted to neglected aspects of the story such as the role of Classics, the importance of the subject for women's higher education, and the connections with English teaching in schools.

Drawing on extensive use of institutional archives and records as well as the writings of contemporary participants, the book offers a vivid and wide-ranging history of English-as-discipline and its centrality across academic, literary, cultural, and educational life over the past two year hundred years, as well as a resounding testament to its continued importance and relevance today.

Genres: History

656 pages, Hardcover

Published July 10, 2025

About the author

Stefan Collini is Professor of Intellectual History and English Literature at Cambridge University. After degrees at Cambridge and Yale, he taught at the University of Sussex before moving to a post in the Faculty of English at Cambridge in 1986. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a frequent contributor to The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The Nation, and other periodicals, and an occasional broadcaster.

His research includes the relation between literature and intellectual history from the early 20th century to the present. Current research focusses on the cultural role of, and the historical assumptions expressed in, literary criticism in Britain from c.1920 to c.1970. Recent work has dealt with the question of intellectuals in 20th-century Britain, the relation between academic critics and 'men of letters', the role of cultural criticism, as well as individual essays on figures such as T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, George Orwell, Raymond Williams, and Richard Hoggart. Also work on the history, and public debates about the role, of universities in Britain.

Reviews

[Alistair Welch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is lengthy, meticulously researched, and profoundly earnest. I didn’t read it cover to cover (that would be an act of masochism) but enjoyed the sections on Cambridge and the Newbolt report in particular. The book’s most useful and interesting chapter comes at the very end: the bibliographical essay on the critical history of the teaching of English is a powerful starting point for anyone interested in the subject of the subject.

[Hamster · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate that Collini's scholarly vocabulary is not too oppressive and that he has a sense of humor (this is one of very few scholarly works that has unironically made me laugh out loud), since reading this would have been miserable otherwise. As it was it can be very tedious at times. I'll fully admit I only skimmed most of Parts 2 and 4, because I was never going to get through this otherwise.

On the whole, a very impressive work of scholarship. Well researched, consistently convincing. I don't have the expertise to fact check most of what's here, but I'll comment on the "celebrities" that appear in Collini's account. First, his near antagonism towards Terry Eagleton was kind of funny, and honestly not unwarranted. Eagleton is great with theory, but when he dips his toes in other disciplines you should probably take what he says with a grain of salt. Collini's analysis of T. S. Eliot's impact leaves a bit to be desired, if only because he's a bit vague as to how Eliot's works were so revolutionary.

And Collini's references to Tolkien and Lewis were interesting, sometimes treating them like surprise celebrity cameos. On the whole, Collini seems to like Tolkien, which I appreciate, but he seems a bit more embarrassed by Lewis. He compliments Lewis's medieval scholarship but otherwise seems pretty dismissive. At one point he rejects a claim that Lewis was representative of one school of thought in English studies without giving much reasoning. I don't disagree with his point, but his unwillingness to even investigate where this claim came from and what kernels of truth it might contain was disappointing.

I think these might be representative of the book as a whole. Collini explicitly wants to mitigate the exaggerated impact of some of the literary celebrities and Oxbridge in order to give more credit to the lesser known figures of English. It's a worthy goal, but he ends up spending so much time on the mitigation that he doesn't always have the time to clearly explain what influence the person did have. And trying to share time between them and a plethora of obscure figures just means too little time for everyone, even in a book this long. This book leaves me feeling like I've learned a lot, and yet still not enough, and that's only partly the fault of my own curiosity.