Edward Dowden was a poet, scholar, and critic who directed his major attention to the professional study of English letters. Because English literature was a new field of academic investigation, he always had to contend with the fact that it lacked the reputation that mathematics and classics had. He brought stature to his discipline by applying to it the spirit and some of the tools of more traditional studies (careful editing, scrupulous handling of materials), as well as by his graceful writing style and immense industry.

Born at Cork in 1843, Dowden was the fourth son of John Wheeler Dowden and his wife Alicia Bennett. The Dowdens were a family of English and Scottish origin that had been settled in Ireland for two hundred years. His immediate forebears, Protestant and, in culture and tradition, English, were of the affluent merchant middle class, with connections in the academic and ecclesiastical...