First published in 1895, Collected Impressions is Saintsbury's lively and individual evaluation of the great Victorian writers from Thackeray through Ruskin. His study of Matthew Arnold is for many the definitive account of the figure who loomed largest in the minds of late Victorian literarati. Saintsbury approached his survey with the premise that the "substance" of literature must "always be life," without undue concern with beliefs, convictions as they are "mere garnishings."