Walter Horatio Pater was an English essayist, art and literary critic, and fiction writer, regarded as one of the great stylists. His first and most often reprinted book, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), revised as The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1877), in which he outlined his approach to art and advocated an ideal of the intense inner life, was taken by many as a manifesto of Aestheticism.
Pater in the 1890s (photograph by Elliott & Fry)
Pater as a young don at Brasenose
Walter Pater lived at 2 Bradmore Road in North Oxford (the right-hand house with a blue plaque) between 1869 and 1885 with his sisters, including Clara Pater, a pioneer of women's education.
Plaque at 2 Bradmore Road, Oxford
A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's goals and methods. Although the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists.
Samuel Johnson, one of the most influential writers and critics of the 18th century. See: Samuel Johnson's literary criticism.
