THIS bibliography has been prepared by a committee of the Victorian Literature Group of the Modern Language Association of America: William D. Templeman, chairman, University of Illinois; Charles Frederick Harrold, Michigan State Normal College; Frederic E. Faverty, Northwestern University; and Samuel P. Chew, University of Oklahoma. It attempts to list the noteworthy publications of 1940 (including reviews of earlier items) that have a bearing on English literature of the Victorian period and similar publications of earlier date that have been inadvertently omitted from the preceding Victorian bibliography. Unless otherwise stated, the date of publication is 1940. Reference to a page in the bibliography for 1939, in Modern philology, May, 1940, is made by the following form: See VB 1939, 412. Some cross-references are given, although not all that are possible. KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS

Victorian Bibliography for 1940

In these words, in a letter to Wordsworth dated 30 January 1801, Charles Lamb spoke of Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner‘ Some readers continue to echo Mrs Barbauld’s complaints that the poem is improbable and has an inadequate or distasteful moral But these are mental reservations: poetry of the order of ‘The Ancient Mariner’ does not work its magic upon the mind alone; and mental afterthoughts are of little use in explaining, least of all in explaining away, the profound spiritual and emotional effect of this poem For every sympathetic reader since Lamb has been similarly possessed and haunted by ‘The Ancient Mariner’

The Mariner and the Albatross

These two quotations, though separated by several thousand years, give some sense of the fear of knowledge and the idea that science corrupts. The second quotation is from a letter to The Times in 1975, from the now President of the Royal Society. Current attitudes to science seem to me to indicate both ambivalence and polarisation. While there is much interest and admiration for science?some would say a religious devotion [2]?there is also, for some, a deep seated fear and hostility, and several lines of criticism [3]. Science is perceived as materialist and of having caused, not only the loss of purpose referred to, but also the threat of nuclear warfare, and the general disenchantment with modern industrial society which pollutes and dehumanises. Science is seen by the relativists as just another faith; and by others as a discipline whose practitioners are cold, unfeeling technicians whose conservatism is highly suspect. The fear of genetic manipulation of embryos looms large. By contrast, belief in the paranormal, astrology and fringe medicine seems to be on the increase. Some of these ideas are not new. The biblical tree of

Science and anti-science. The Lloyd-Roberts Lecture 1986.

THE 1866 FENIAN RAID ON CANADA WEST: A Study of Colonial Perceptions and Reactions Towards the Fenians in the Confederation Era

It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progressionall, and otherwise made in vaine; Without this accomplishment the naturall expectation and desire of such state, were but a fallacy in nature, unsatisfied Considerators; would quarrell the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower, whereby by knowing no other Originall, and deeper ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happinesse of inferiour creatures, who in tranquillity possesse their Constitutions, as having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures. (Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial, chap. 4)1

Claude T. Bissell

Papers

Nineteenth-century studies

Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English@@@The Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English and French