Ralph Wardle's biographies of eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century British writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Oliver Goldsmith, and William Hazlitt are characterized by a Firm grasp of biographical details and a careful attention to published and unpublished sources, while being less authoritative in the areas of literary interpretation and criticism. Clearly written and well organized, they are an excellent starting place for someone seeking a careful chronological accounting of events and personalities in these writers' lives, as well as a view of the writers from the perspective of other public literary and political Figures of the day.

Ralph Martin Wardle was born on 10 May 1909 in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, to Harry Hazlewood and Margaret Martin Wardle. He received an A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1931. After teaching at the Palo Verde Ranch School in Mesa, Arizona, from 1931 to 1933, he received his A.M. in English from Harvard University in 1934. In 1936 he...