Matthew Arnold, Our Contemporary‪.‬

Ian Hamilton, A Gift Imprisoned: The Poetic Life of Matthew Arnold (Basic Books, 1999), 250 pp., $24.00 cloth; Clinton Machann, Matthew Arnold: A Literary Life (St. Martin's Press, 1998), 224 pp., $35.00 cloth; Nicholas Murray, A Life of Matthew Arnold (St. Martin's Press, 1997), 400 pp., $27.95 cloth; Donald D. Stone, Communications with the Future: Matthew Arnold in Dialogue (U of Michigan P, 1997), 232 pp., $42.50 cloth. Matthew Arnold's bewhiskered face looks at you from each of these volumes. Interest in Arnold's work has been flourishing of late; Arnold's writings on education and culture are still central to any debate on these subjects, even if his views are decried. No fewer than three new biographies of him have come out in the last three years which is strange for a life as empty of scandal as Arnold's.