George Saintsbury

George Saintsbury (1845–1933) was an English critic and literary historian. After years as a schoolmaster and a prolific journalist for the Saturday Review and other papers, he was professor of rhetoric and English literature at Edinburgh from 1895 to 1915. His output was enormous: A Short History of French Literature, A History of Criticism in three volumes, A History of English Prosody, histories of the French novel and of English literature, and studies of Dryden, Scott and Thackeray. He read everything and judged by taste rather than theory. His Notes on a Cellar-Book, a memoir of a lifetime's drinking, remains his most popular work.