David Cecil

The Fine Art of Reading

Hardy The Novelist

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, PC, FRS (1779-1848), usually addressed as Lord Melbourne, was a British Whig statesman who served as Home Secretary (1830-1834) and Prime Minister (1834 and 1835-1841). He is best known for his intense and successful mentoring of Queen Victoria, at ages 18-21, in the ways of politics. Historians have concluded that Melbourne does not rank high as a prime minister, for there were no great foreign wars or domestic issues to handle, he lacked major achievements, and he enunciated no grand principles. His most famous dictum in politics was "Why not leave it alone?", quoted by those who object to change for change's sake. The city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, was named in his honor in March 1837, as he was Prime Minister at the time. Melbourne was dismissed by King William IV in 1834, the last British prime minister to be dismissed by a monarch.--Wikipedia.

Melbourne

Modern Library's 100th best non-fiction book of all time, and John F. Kennedy's favourite book.A masterful biography of the life of Lord Melbourne - Queen Victoria's Prime Minister and devoted mentor, and one of England's most controversial statesmen - whose turbulent marriage to Lady Caroline Lamb was one of the greatest scandals of the era. A charming, curious and altogether idiosyncratic figure, Melbourne is the perfect subject for a biography and David Cecil - with his elegant, thoughtful style and perfect scholarship - was his ideal biographer. The resulting work is a true classic of the genre and remains the most important and comprehensive account of Britain's most beguiling and individual Prime Minister.This volume contains the entirety of David Cecil's two seminal biographies of Lord Melbourne - The Young Melbourne and Lord M - in one definitive book. "A superb work of art" - Harold Nicholson"A historian of the heart" - L. P. Hartley

The Young Melbourne & Lord M

Charles Williams

Ernest De Selincourt

Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall Tillyard

The New Book of English Verse

Cecil contrasts Palmer the visionary and Burne-Jones the Pre-Raphaelite dreamer in their use of poetry as a source of inspiration for painting.

Two Poetic Painters, Samuel Palmer and Edward Burne-Jones

Visionary and Dreamer

A Biography

First published in 1929, The Stricken Deer was the winner of that year's James Tait Black Memorial Prize and also the Hawthornden Prize: it was David Cecil's first book. For a time, towards the end of the eighteenth-century, William Cowper was the foremost poet in England. But David Cecil's biography doesn't celebrate a life of success, rather, in Cowper's own words, 'the strange and uncommon incidents of my life.' Cowper suffered from severe bouts of depression. His personal tragedy however enriched English literature: the fear of madness made him turn to writing poetry as a form of mental discipline, and isolation for the great world and from his own kind helped him to become the most enchanting of letter-writers. 'This is a sympathetic and vivid biography; it is subtle with a kind of gentle acuteness and vivid without literary ostentation. It is the work of a biographer with a clear head and a clever heart ... the rarest of all merits is the sensitive fairness of the of the biographer's estimate of character and situation throughout.' Desmond MacCarthy, "Sunday Times"

The Life of William Cowper

The Stricken Deer

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Two Quiet Lives

This volume contains the text of the Leslie Stephen Lecture for 1935, delivered by Lord David Cecil at the University of Cambridge.

Jane Austen

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Young Melbourne and the Story of His Marriage with Caroline Lamb

Drawing on Jane Austen's letters, novels and other people's memories of her, Lord David Cecil sets out 'to reconstruct and depict her living personality and to explore its relation to her art'. The portrait that emerges is of a clear-sighted, observant, strong-minded woman whose witty and ironic representation of her own society has delighted readers for centuries.

David Cecil

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