Forms: 4 Sc. lateratour, 5–6 litt-, lytterature, 6 Sc. literatur, -uir, 6– literature. [ad. (either directly or through F. littérature) L. litterātūra (whence Sp. literatura, It. letteratura, G. litteratur), f. littera a letter. Cf. LETTRURE.]
1. Acquaintance with ‘letters’ or books; polite or humane learning; literary culture. Now rare and obsolescent. (The only sense in Johnson and in Todd 1818.)
c. 1375. Sc. Leg. Saints, xxxi. (Eugenia), 53. Scho had leyryte … of þe sewine sciens … & part had of al lateratour.
c. 1425. Wyntoun, Cron., IX. xxiii. 2227. Cunnand in to litterature, A seymly persone in stature [etc.].
1432–50. trans. Higden (Rolls), VI. 359. Seynte Grimbalde the monke, nobly instructe in litterature and in musyke.
1513. Bradshaw, St. Werburge, II. 4. The comyn people … Whiche without lytterature and good informacyon Ben lyke to Brute beestes.
a. 1529. Skelton, Bowge of Courte, 449. I know your vertu and your lytterature.
1581. N. Burne, Disput., xxv. 109 b. Ane pure man, quha … hes nocht sufficient literatur to vndirstand the scripture.
1605. Bacon, Adv. Learn., I. To the King § 2. 2. There hath not beene … any King … so learned in all literature and erudition, diuine and humane.
c. 1645. Howell, Lett. (1650), I. 346. In comparison of your spacious literature, I have held all the while but a candle to the sun.
1693. J. Edwards, Author. O. & N. Test., 239. Another person of infinite literature [Selden].
1727. Swift, Let. Eng. Tongue, Wks. 1755, II. I. 187. Till better care be taken in the education of our young nobility, that they may set out into the world with some foundation of literature.
1779–81. Johnson, L. P., Milton (1868), 37. He had probably more than common literature, as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. Ibid., 62. His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the languages which are considered either as learned or polite.
1802. Mar. Edgeworth, Moral T. (1816), I. 206. A woman of considerable information and literature.
1862. Borrow, Wild Wales, II. x. 104. The boots [is] a fellow without either wit or literature.
1880. Howells, Undisc. Country, xix. 290. In many things he was grotesquely ignorant; he was a man of very small literature.
2. Literary work or production; the activity or profession of a man of letters; the realm of letters.
1779. Johnson, L. P., Cowley, ¶ 1. An author whose pregnancy of imagination and elegance of language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of literature.
1791–1823. D’Israeli, Cur. Lit. (1859), II. 407. Literature, with us, exists independent of patronage or association.
1830. Scott, Introd. to Lay Last Minstr., Poet. Wks. 1833–4, VI. 17. I determined that literature should be my staff, but not my crutch, and that the profits of my literary labour … should not … become necessary to my ordinary expenses.
1853. Lytton, My Novel, VII. viii. Ah, you make literature your calling, sir?
1879. Morley, Burke, 9. Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions.
3. Literary productions as a whole; the body of writings produced in a particular country or period, or in the world in general. Now also in a more restricted sense, applied to writing which has claim to consideration on the ground of beauty of form or emotional effect. Light literature: see LIGHT a.1 19.
This sense is of very recent emergence both in Eng. and Fr.
1812. Sir H. Davy, Chem. Philos., 6. Their literature, their works of art offer models that have never been excelled.
1838. Arnold, Hist. Rome, I. 21. Many common words, which no nation ever derives from the literature of another, are the same in Greek and Latin.
1845. M. Pattison, Ess. (1889), I. 1. Such history, almost more than any other branch of literature, varies with the age that produces it.
1856. Emerson, Eng. Traits, Ability, Wks. (Bohn), II. 41. There is no department of literature, of science, or of useful art, in which they have not produced a first rate book.
1857. Buckle, Civiliz., I. v. 244. Literature, when it is in a healthy and unforced state, is simply the form in which the knowledge of a country is registered.
1874. Green, Short Hist., vii. § 7. 413. The full glory of the new literature broke on England with Edmund Spenser.
1879. Seeley, in Macm. Mag., XLI. 24. Those who cannot have recourse to foreign literatures are forced to put up with their ignorance.
b. The body of books and writings that treat of a particular subject.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. vi. 44. I was well acquainted with the literature of the subject.
1879. Harlan, Eyesight, i. 9. It … has accumulated a literature of its own which an ordinary lifetime is hardly long enough to master.
c. colloq. Printed matter of any kind.
1895. Daily News, 20 Nov., 5/2. In canvassing, in posters, and in the distribution of what, by a profane perversion of language, is called ‘literature.’
1900. Westm. Gaz., 12 Oct., 2/1. A more judicious distribution of posters, and what is termed ‘literature.’
