Works
On 18 November 1841 Richards brought out an anonymous pamphlet Oxford Unmasked, in which he denounced abuses in the organisation of the university. It passed through five editions; and its authorship became known. His first dramatic work, published in 1845, was a five-act tragedy Crœsus, King of Lydia. Four other five-act dramas followed: Runnymede in 1846, Cromwell in 1847, Isolda, or Good King Stephen in 1848, and Vandyck, a Play of Genoa, in 1850. In 1846 there appeared his first volume of poems, Death and the Magdalen, and in 1848 another, entitled The Dream of the Soul.
An nationalist and militarist, opposed to the Manchester school of politicians, Richards issued in 1848, in the form of a letter addressed to Richard Cobden, a denunciation of the "peace-at-any-price party", under the title of Cobden and his Pamphlet considered. Another volume was Britain Redeemed and Canada Preserved, anticipating a railway between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Poems, Essays, and Opinions (2 vols.), and Essays and Opinions (2 vols.) consisted of writings from The Mirror of the Time. He brought out, in 1854, a collection of lyrics called The Minstrelsy of War.
In 1869 Richards published Medea, a poetic rhapsody on the picture by Frederick Sandys. In 1871 his only novel So very Human was published, with a title suggested by a phrase from Charles Dickens. Besides the five dramas above, Richards produced four others. One of these, his tragedy of Norma, based on the libretto of Vincenzo Bellini's opera, was performed for the first time on 5 February 1875 at Belfast, with Miss Wallis in the title rôle. His other dramatic works, which were not published, were The Prisoner of Toulon, King Pym, or the Great Rebellion, and Love and Patience.
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Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.... In relation to the inclusiveness and literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“We all agree now—by “we” I mean intelligent people under sixty—that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves. Unluckily, the matter does not end there: a rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.”
—Clive Bell (1881–1962)
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)