H.D. Traill: Championing the Man of Letters

Abstract

Although H.D. Traill is now considered a minor figure among Victorian writers, he deserves to be remembered because his views on literature, culture, and the responsibilities of the literary critic epitomize the most respectable strain of professional literary life in late-Victorian London. Furthermore, he was much less quirky and complex than some of his more accomplished colleagues, such as Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, and George Saintsbury, all of whom admired Traill. As a journalist, leader writer, literary critic, imaginative writer, and editor, he presents an argument for the utilitarian function of the professional man of letters who serves to guide middle-class readers in a time of cultural uncertainty.