Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.

It is a common belief that in France the study of medieval literature as literature only began to gain recognition as a valid occupation for the scholar during the nineteenth century. It is well known that historians of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries looked to the literary productions of the Middle Ages for materials useful to their researches, but it is only recently that the remarkable frequency of this reference has been appreciated and that scholars have become aware of an unbroken tradition of what might best be described as historically ori ented medievalism stretching from the sixteenth century to our own. The eighteenth century has drawn the greatest number of curious to this field, for it is evident that the surprisingly extensive researches undertaken then do much to explain the progress made a century later by the most celebrated generation of medievalistst. Very slowly we are coming to see the value of the contribution made by little known schol ars like La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Etienne Barbazan and the Comte de Caylus.

The Colbeck collection was formed over half a century ago by the Bournemouth bookseller Norman Colbeck. Focusing primarily on British essayists and poets of the nineteenth century from the Romantic Movement through the Edwardian era, the collection features nearly 500 authors and lists over 13,000 works. Entries are alphabetically arranged by author with copious notes on the condition and binding of each copy. Nine appendices provide listings of selected periodicals, series publications, anthologies, yearbooks, and topical works.

In the one hundred and ten years covered by volume four of The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, what characterized translation was above all the move to encompass what Goethe called 'world literature'. This occurred, paradoxically, at a time when English literature is often seen as increasingly self-sufficient. In Europe, the culture of Germany was a new source of inspiration, as were the medieval literatures and the popular ballads of many lands, from Spain to Serbia. From the mid-century, the other literatures of the North, both ancient and modern, were extensively translated, and the last third of the century saw the beginning of the Russian vogue. Meanwhile, as the British presence in the East was consolidated, translation helped readers to take possession of 'exotic' non-European cultures, from Persian and Arabic to Sanskrit and Chinese. The thirty-five contributors bring an enormous range of expertise to the exploration of these new developments and of the fascinating debates which reopened old questions about the translator's task, as the new literalism, whether scholarly or experimental, vied with established modes of translation. The complex story unfolds in Britain and its empire, but also in the United States, involving not just translators, publishers, and readers, but also institutions such as the universities and the periodical press. Nineteenth-century English literature emerges as more open to the foreign than has been recognized before, with far-reaching effects on its orientation.