George Sampson

George Sampson combined literary scholarship with educational advocacy, arguing that language teaching belonged at the heart of national education. English for the English develops that case through a program for reading, composition, speech, and literary study, rather than treating English as a narrow examination subject. Cambridge University Press first issued the work in 1921 and later returned it to print in revised editions. Sampson also produced The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, a single-volume abridgment of the multivolume Cambridge History, work that made him familiar to generations of students. His book on English teaching reflects the same effort to connect literary inheritance with ordinary classroom practice.