Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was a British poet and cultural critic. Though he is remembered today largely for his elegantly argued critical essays, he began his career as a poet and believed that poetry should be the “criticism of life.” His work as a critic—literary and social—began later in his career with his professorship of poetry at Oxford. By the late 1860s, he had turned almost entirely to prose. Arnold was educated at Rugby School, where his father was headmaster, and later at Oxford. Upon completing his studies, he took up a job teaching at Rugby School and traveled around the continent, eventually taking the position of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools, which he held for thirty-five years. He became the apostle of “culture” in such works as Culture and Anarchy, what is in some regards his most central work. |
