A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day. Volume 3 (of 3), Modern Criticism

George Saintsbury's monumental third volume tackles one of the most contentious questions in literary history: how should we judge the literature of our own time? Writing in 1904, Saintsbury addresses the 19th century's explosive literary production - the Romantics, the Realists, the triumph of the novel, the battle between ancient forms and modern experiments. Yet this is not merely a survey. Saintsbury, a confirmed lover of older literature, makes a passionate case for evaluating modern works on their own terms rather than holding them to classical standards. He traces the critical revolution that transformed how Europe read and argued about books, showing how taste itself evolved from rigid hierarchies to something more capacious. The result is both a rigorous intellectual history and a snapshot of late-Victorian literary culture at its most assured. For anyone curious about how we learned to read modern literature - or how criticism became a discipline in its own right - this volume remains indispensable.