Providence and Love Studies in Wordsworth, Channing, Myers, George Eliot, and Ruskin

These studies are connected by common underlying themes: the sense of Providence, the growing awareness of its loss in the nineteenth century and the pressure on the ideal of Romantic love as that came increasingly to be treated as a substitute. Investigation of these matters has led to close scrutiny of various manuscripts in British and American libraries, certain of which, including some letters of George Eliot recently discovered in Cambridge, are reproduced here for the first time.

John Beer is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Cambridge University and Fellow of Peterhouse.