BRANDES, Georg Morris Cohen, Danish literary critic of Jewish family: b. Copenhagen, 4 Feb. 1842. He was graduated at the Univer sity of Copenhagen in 1864, and taught there 1872-77. Several books on aesthetic and phil osophic subjects brought on him a charge of skepticism which was not removed by an epoch making series of lectures, delivered before large audiences, and published under the title The Main Literary Currents of the Nineteenth Century' (1872-82) ; for his description of the later intellectual position of Europe, as broken away from the orthodoxy and romanticism of the beginning of the century, brought on him the bitter attacks of all the reactionary forces in Denmark. His (Danske Digtere,' a mas terpiece of psychological analysis, appeared in 1877; but the hostility of his enemies induced him in the same year to leave Denmark and settle in Berlin, where he published, among other works, critical biographies of Lassalle (1877) ; Esaias Tegner (1878), and Lord Bea consfield (1879). Then a lecture tour through Norway and Denmark brought a powerful party to his side, and in 1882 he returned to Copen hagen, his countrymen having guaranteed him an income of $1,000, with the one stipulation that he should deliver public lectures on literature.
Among his later works are Wen Romantiske Skole 1 Frankrig' (1882) ; a biography of Lud wig Holberg (1885) ; a valuable study of Shakespeare, published in an English transla tion in 1899; I Impressions of Russia' (1888); (Poems' (1899) ; Berlin as an Imperial Court) (1884). Brandes is not only the foremost critic of Denmark, but one of the great literary critics of his age. His works have been trans lated into German and also into English and French. Brandes is known as the scientific critic of literature, which he considers as a mirror of life itself. Recent works from his pen are (1903) ; 'Recollections of My Child hood and My Youth' (1906) ; (1908) ; Ferdinand Lassalle' (New York 1911).