Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator. Matthew Arnold has been characterised as a sage writer, a type of writer who chastises and instructs the reader on contemporary social issues.

Harold Bloom writes that "Whatever his achievement as a critic of literature, society or religion, his work as a poet may not merit the reputation it has continued to hold in the twentieth century. Arnold is, at his best, a very good, but highly derivative poet, unlike Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins, Swinburne and Rossetti, all of whom individualized their voices."

The writer John Cowper Powys, an admirer, wrote that, "with the possible exception of Merope, Matthew Arnold's poetry is arresting from cover to cover – [he] is the great amateur of English poetry [he] always has the air of an ironic and urbane scholar chatting freely, perhaps a little indiscreetly, with his not very respectful pupils."

Partial list of works:

The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems
Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
'Sohrab and Rustum
The Scholar-Gipsy
'Memorial Verses to Wordsworth'
Stanzas in Memory of the Author of "Obermann
Rugby Chapel
Thyrsis
Essays in Criticism
Culture and Anarchy
Friendship's Garland