Edward Dowden (1843 -1913) was an Irish critic and poet. Dowden's first book, Shakespeare, his Mind and Art (1875), resulted from a revision of a course of lectures and began his reputation as a critic. A History of French Literature: Short Histories of the Literatures of the World was written in 1895. The book covers French literature from the Middle Ages to 1850 with an extensive bibliography at the end.