Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD
Introduction to The Medieval Period
History, Narrative, Culture
England Before the Norman Conquest
Roman and Celtic Britain
Migration and Conversion
Invasion and Unification
England After the Norman Conquest
The Normans and Feudalism
Henry II and an International Culture
The Thirteenth Century
The English Monarchy
Cultural Expression in the Fourteenth Century
Fifteenth-Century Transitions
Language and Prosody
History of the Language and of Print and Manuscript Culture
BEDE
from Ecclesiastical History of the English People
A Description of the Island of Britain and its Inhabitants
The Coming of the English to Britain
The Life and Conversion of Edwin, King of Northumbria; the Faith of the East Angles
Abbess Hild of Whitby; the Miraculous Poet Cædmon
Cædmon’s Hymn in Old and Modern English
EXETER BOOK ELEGIES
The Wanderer
The Seafarer
The Wife’s Lament
The Ruin
BEOWULF
In Context: Background Material
Glossary of Proper Names
Genealogies
The Geatish-Swedish Wars
MARIE DE FRANCE
Lanval
MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRICS
Sumer is icumen in
Foweles in the frith
Betwene Mersh and Averil
Stond well, moder, under Rode
I lovede a child of this cuntree
I have a gentil cock
I sing of a maiden
Adam lay ibounden
Farewell this world, I take my leve forever
Bring us in good ale
Of all creatures women be best
My lefe is faren in a long
CONTEXTS: THE CRISES OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
The Great Famine
from Anonymous (the “Monk of Malmsebury”), Life of Edward the Second
The Hundred Years’ War
from Jean Froissart, Chronicle
from Prince Edward, Letter to the People of London
The Black Death
from Ralph of Shrewsbury, Letter (17 August 1348)
from Henry Knighton, Chronicle
The Uprising of 1381
from Regulations, London (1350)
from Statute of Laborers (1351)
from Statute (1363)
from Jean Froissart, Chronicle, Account of a Sermon by John Ball
from Henry Knighton, Chronicle
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
In Context: Fled Bricrend
from Fled Bricrend/Bricriu’s Feast
In Context: Illustrations from the Original Manuscript
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
from The Canterbury Tales
The General Prologue
The Knight’s Tale
The Miller’s Prologue and Tale
The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale
The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale
Chaucer’s Retraction
JULIAN OF NORWICH
from A Revelation of Love
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 5
Chapter 7
Chapter 11
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 58
Chapter 60
Chapter 86
MARGERY KEMPE
from The Book of Margery Kempe
The Proem
The Preface
from Book 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 11
Chapter 50
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
CONTEXTS: RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL LIFE
Celtic Christianity
Church and Cathedral
Religion for All: The Apostles’ Creed, the Pater Noster, and the Hail Mary
from Robert Manning of Brunne, Handlyng Synne
from William of Pagula, Priest’s Eye
from The Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council
Sin, Corruption, and Indulgence
from William Langland, The Vision of Piers the Plowman
from Passus 1
Passus 5
from Passus 7
from Thomas Wimbleton, Sermon
Lollardy
from Account of the Heresy Trial of Margery Baxter
The Persecution of the Jews
from Thomas of Monmouth, The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich
from Roger Howden, Chronicle
from Ordinances of the Jews
from Charter of King John to the Jews
from Ordinances of Henry III
Edward I’s Order
MEDIEVAL DRAMA
THE WAKEFIELD MASTER
The Second Shepherds’ Play
In Context: Biblical Source Material
from Douay-Rheims Bible, Luke 2.8-21
EVERYMAN
SIR THOMAS MALORY
from Morte Darthur
from Merlin
The Death of King Arthur or The Most Piteous Tale of the Morte Arthur Saunz Guerdon
Slander and Strife
The Vengeance of Sir Gawain
The Siege of Benwick
The Day of Destiny
The Dolorous Death and Departing out of this World of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere
In Context: Early Editions of Morte Darthur
Caxton’s Preface
Illustrating Morte Darthur
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Introduction to The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century
Humanism
Scientific Inquiry
The Reformation in England
Wales, Scotland, Ireland
Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I and Gender
Homoeroticism and Transgendering
Economy and Society in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
“The Wide World’s Imagined Corners”
The Stuarts and the Civil Wars
Literary Genres
Literature in Prose, and the Development of Print Culture
Poetry
The Drama
The English Language in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
History of the Language and of Print Culture
SIR THOMAS MORE
from Utopia: The Best State of a Commonwealth and the New Island of Utopia
from Book 1
from Book 2
Chapter 1
from Chapter 2: The Cities, and Especially Amaurote
from Chapter 4: Crafts and Occupations
from Chapter 5: Their Dealings With One Another
from Chapter 6: Traveling
from Chapter 7: Slavery
from Chapter 8: Warfare
from Chapter 9: The Religions in Utopia
WILLIAM TYNDALE
Tyndale’s English Bible, King James Bible, Geneva Bible, Douay-Rheims Bible
Genesis: Chapter 1
Matthew: Chapter 5
SIR THOMAS WYATT
Sonnets
Sonnet 10 (“The long love that in my thought doth harbour”)
Sonnet 11 (“Whoso list to hunt, I know where is a hind”)
Sonnet 17 (“I find no peace, and all my war is done”)
Sonnet 19 (“My galley charged with forgetfulness”)
Sonnet 29 (“The pillar perished is whereto I leant”)
Sonnet 31 (“Farewell, Love, and all thy laws forever”)
Epigrams
38 (“Alas, madam, for stealing of a kiss”)
48 (“Vulcan begat me; Minerva me taught”)
60 (“Tagua, farewell, that westward with thy streams”)
Ballads
80 (“They flee from me that sometime did me seek”)
94 (“Blame not my lute, for he must sound”)
Songs
109 (“My lute, awake! Perform the last”)
123 (“Who list his wealth and ease retain”)
Epistolary Satires
149 (“Mine own John Poyns, since ye delight to know”)
In Context: Epistolary Advice
Letter from Thomas Wyatt to his son (15 April 1537)
HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY
Love, that Doth Reign and Live within My Thought
Set Me Whereas the Sun Doth Parch the Green
Alas! So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace
So Cruel Prison How Could Betide
Wyatt Resteth Here
from Certain Books of Virgil’s Aeneis: Book 2
THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET AND LYRIC
The Continental Background
Francesco Petrarch
from Rime Sparse
Sonnet 134 (“I find no peace and all my war is done”)
Sonnet 140 (“Love, that doth reign and live within my thought”)
Sonnet 189 (“My galley chargèd with forgetfulness”)
Sonnet 190 (“Whoso list to hunt, I know where is a hind”)
Gaspara Stampa
Sonnet 132 (“When in my weeping I inquire of Love”)
Joachim Du Bellay
Sonnet 113 (“If this, our life, be less than but a day”)
Pierre de Ronsard
(“I would in rich and golden coloured rain”)
(“When you are very old, by candle’s flame”)
Samuel Daniel
from Delia
Sonnet 6 (“Fair is my love, and cruel as she’s fair”)
Michael Drayton
from Idea
Sonnet 63 (“Truce, gentle Love, a parley now I crave”)
William Shakespeare
from Romeo and Juliet
Act 1, Scene 5 (“If I profane with my unworthiest hand”)
Sir John Davies
from Gulling Sonnets
Sonnet 3 (“What eagle can behold her sun-bright eye”)
John Davies of Hereford
from The Scourge of Villany
(“If there were, oh! an Hellespont of cream”)
Richard Barnfield
from Cynthia
Sonnet 14 (“Here, hold this glove [this milk-white cheverel glove]”)
Sonnet 17 (“Cherry-lipped Adonis in his snowy shape”)
George Gascoigne
Gascoigne’s Lullaby
Anonymous
Ode (“Absence, hear thou my protestation”)
EDMUND SPENSER
from The Faerie Queene
from Book 1
Canto 1
Canto 2
Canto 3
Canto 4
Canto 5: Summary
Canto 6: Summary
Canto 7
Canto 8
Canto 9
Canto 10
Canto 11
Canto 12
In Context: The Redcrosse Knight
In Context: Christian Armor
from Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, 6.11-17 (Geneva Bible)
from Desiderius Erasmus, Enchiridion militis Christiani [Handbook of the Christian Soldier]
In Context: Spirituality and The Faerie Queene
Heading to the Song of Solomon (Geneva Bible)
from Amoretti
Sonnet 1 (“Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands”)
Sonnet 3 (“The soverayne beauty which I doo admyre”)
Sonnet 6 (“Be nought dismayd that her unmovèd mind”)
Sonnet 15 (“Ye tradefull Merchants, that with weary toyle”)
Sonnet 22 (“This holy season fit to fast and pray”)
Sonnet 26 (“Sweet is the Rose, but grows upon a brere”)
Sonnet 34 (“Lyke as a ship that through the Ocean wyde”)
Sonnet 37 (“What guyle is this, that those her golden tresses”)
Sonnet 54 (“Of this worlds Theatre in which we stay”)
Sonnet 64 (“Comming to kisse her lyps, [such grace I found]”)
Sonnet 67 (“Lyke as a huntsman after weary chace”)
Sonnet 68 (“Most glorious Lord of lyfe that on this day”)
Sonnet 69 (“The famous warriors of the anticke world”)
Sonnet 70 (“Fresh spring the herald of loves mighty king”)
Sonnet 74 (“Most happy letters fram’d by skilfull trade”)
Sonnet 75 (“One day I wrote her name upon the strand”)
Sonnet 80 (“After so long a race as I have run”)
Sonnet 82 (“Joy of my life, full oft for loving you”)
Sonnet 89 (“Lyke as the Culver on the barèd bough”)
Epithalamion
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
from Astrophil and Stella
Sonnet 1 (“Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show”)
Sonnet 2 (“Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot”)
Sonnet 7 (“When Nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes”)
Sonnet 24 (“Rich fools there be whose base and filthy heart”)
Sonnet 31 (“With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies”)
Sonnet 47 (“What, have I thus betrayed my liberty?”)
Sonnet 71 (“Who will in fairest book of Nature know”)
from The Defence of Poesy
In Context: The Abuse of Poesy
from Plato, The Republic, Book 2
from Stephen Gosson, The School of Abuse
ELIZABETH I, QUEEN OF ENGLAND
Written on a Wall at Woodstock
Written in Her French Psalter
The Doubt of Future Foes
On Monsieur’s Departure
When I was Fair and Young
To our most noble and virtuous Queen Katherine, Elizabeth her humble daughter wishes perpetual felicity and everlasting joy
To the Troops at Tilbury
Two letters from Elizabeth to Catherine de Bourbon, sister of Henri IV of France
The Golden Speech
In Context: The Defeat of the Spanish Armada
CONTEXTS: CULTURE: A PORTFOLIO
Music
from Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler
Painting
from Nicholas Hilliard, A Treatise Concerning the Art of Limning
from A Letter to F.P. Verney from the Countess of Sussex
Oliver Cromwell, Instructions to his Painter, as Reported by George Vertue, Notebooks
Games and Pastimes
Selected Illustrations
Food and Drink
from Anonymous, A Relation, or Rather a True Account, of the Island of England
from Fynes Moryson, Itinerary
from Sarah Longe, Mrs. Sarah Longe her Receipt Book
from William Harrison, Chronologie
Children and Education
Selected Illustrations
The Supernatural and the Miraculous
from Reginald Scot, The Discovery of Witchcraft
from George Gifford, A Discourse of the Subtle Practices of Devils by Witches and Sorcerers
from Joseph Hall, Characters of Virtues and Vices
from Sir John Harington, “Account of an Audience with King James I”
Anonymous broadsheet, “The Form and Shape of a Monstrous Child Born at Maidstone in Kent, the 24th of October, 1568”
Crime
from “A True Report of the late Horrible Murder Committed by William Sherwood”
Print Culture
Selected Illustrations
AEMILIA LANYER
from Salve Deus Rex Judæorum
To the Virtuous Reader
Invocation
Eve’s Apology in Defense of Women
The Description of Cooke-ham
To the Doubtful Reader
SIR WALTER RALEGH
A Vision Upon This Conceit of the Fairy Queen
Sir Walter Ralegh to His Son
The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
The Lie
Nature That Washed Her Hands in Milk
from The Discovery of the Large, Rich, and Beautiful Empire of Guiana
Part 1, Preface
from Part 5
Letter to His Wife
FRANCIS BACON
from Essays
Of Truth
Of Marriage and Single Life
Of Studies (1597)
Of Studies (1625)
Of Love
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
Hero and Leander
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
In Context: Dr. Faustus
from The History of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faustus
from Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia (Of Occult Philosophy)
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Sonnets
Sonnet 1 (“From fairest creatures we desire increase”)
Sonnet 2 (“When forty winters shall besiege thy brow”)
Sonnet 12 (“When I do count the clock that tells the time”)
Sonnet 15 (“When I consider everything that grows”)
Sonnet 16 (“But wherefore do not you a mightier way”)
Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”)
Sonnet 19 (“Devouring time, blunt thou the lion’s paws”)
Sonnet 20 (“A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted”)
Sonnet 23 (“As an unperfect actor on the stage”)
Sonnet 29 (“When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”)
Sonnet 30 (“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought”)
Sonnet 33 (“Full many a glorious morning have I seen”)
Sonnet 35 (“No more be grieved at that which thou hast done”)
Sonnet 36 (“Let me confess that we two must be twain”)
Sonnet 55 (“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments”)
Sonnet 60 (“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore”)
Sonnet 64 (“When I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced”)
Sonnet 65 (“Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea”)
Sonnet 71 (“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”)
Sonnet 73 (“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”)
Sonnet 74 (“But be contented when that fell arrest”)
Sonnet 80 (“O how I faint when I of you do write”)
Sonnet 87 (“Farewell—thou art too dear for my possessing”)
Sonnet 93 (“So shall I live supposing thou art true”)
Sonnet 94 (“They that have power to hurt and will do none”)
Sonnet 97 (“How like a winter hath my absence been”)
Sonnet 98 (“From you have I been absent in the spring”)
Sonnet 105 (“Let not my love be called idolatry”)
Sonnet 106 (“When in the chronicle of wasted time”)
Sonnet 109 (“O never say that I was false of heart”)
Sonnet 110 (“Alas, ’tis true, I have gone here and there”)
Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)
Sonnet 117 (“Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all”)
Sonnet 127 (“In the old age black was not counted fair”)
Sonnet 128 (“How oft when thou, my music, music play’st”)
Sonnet 129 (“Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame”)
Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)
Sonnet 135 (“Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will”)
Sonnet 136 (“If thy soul check thee that I come so near”)
Sonnet 138 (“When my love swears that she is made of truth”)
Sonnet 143 (“Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch”)
Sonnet 144 (“Two loves I have, of comfort and despair”)
Sonnet 147 (“My love is as a fever, longing still”)
Sonnet 153 (“Cupid laid by his brand, and fell asleep”)
Sonnet 154 (“The little love-god lying once asleep”)
King Lear
In Context: The Shakespearean Theater
The Swan Theatre
Titus Andronicus in Performance
The Plot of an Elizabethan Play
Early Editions of Shakespeare’s Plays
BEN JONSON
To the Reader
To My Book
On Something that Walks Somewhere
To William Camden
On My First Daughter
To John Donne
On My First Son
On Lucy, Countess of Bedford
Inviting a Friend to Supper
To Penshurst
Song: To Celia
To the Memory of My Beloved, The Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, And What He Hath Left Us
Ode to Himself
My Picture Left in Scotland
To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of That Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison
Karolin’s Song
Hymn to Cynthia
Clerimont’s Song
JOHN DONNE
from Songs and Sonnets
The Good-Morrow
Song (“Go, and catch a falling star”)
Woman’s Constancy
The Sun Rising
The Canonization
Song (“Sweetest love, I do not go”)
Air and Angels
Break of Day
The Anniversary
Twicknam Garden
A Valediction: of Weeping
The Flea
A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day
The Bait
The Apparition
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
The Ecstasy
The Relic
from Elegies
Elegy 1. Jealousy
Elegy 8. The Comparison
Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed
from Satires
Satire 3 (“Kind pity chokes my spleen; brave scorn forbids”)
from Verse Letters
To Sir Henry Wotton
An Anatomy of the World
The First Anniversary
from Holy Sonnets
Sonnet 2 (“As due by many titles I resign”)
Sonnet 5 (“I am a little world made cunningly”)
Sonnet 6 (“This is my play’s last scene, here heavens appoint”)
Sonnet 7 (“At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow”)
Sonnet 9 (“If poisonous minerals, and if that tree”)
Sonnet 10 (“Death be not proud, though some have called thee”)
Sonnet 13 (“What if this present were the world’s last night?”)
Sonnet 14 (“Batter my heart, three personed God; for you”)
Sonnet 18 (“Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear”)
Sonnet 19 (“Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one”)
Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward
A Hymn to God the Father
from Devotions
Meditation 17
LADY MARY WROTH
from Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
Sonnet 1 (“When night’s black mantle could most darkness prove”)
Sonnet 6 (“My pain, still smothered in my grieved breast”)
Sonnet 7 (“Love leave to urge, thou know’st thou hast the hand”)
Sonnet 13 (“Dear, famish not what you your self gave food”)
Sonnet 14 (“Am I thus conquered? have I lost the powers?”)
Sonnet 15 (“Truly poor Night thou welcome art to me”)
Sonnet 22 (“Like to the Indians, scorched with the sun”)
Sonnet 23 (“When every one to pleasing pastime hies”)
Sonnet 35 (“False hope which feeds but to destroy, and spill”)
from A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love
Sonnet 77 (“In this strange labyrinth how shall I turn?”)
Railing Rhymes Returned upon the Author by Mistress Mary Wroth
In Context: The Occasion of “Railing Rhymes”
Edward Denny, Baron of Waltham, “To Pamphilia from the father-in-law of Seralius”
THOMAS HOBBES
from Leviathan
The Introduction
from Chapter 13: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind as Concerning their Felicity and Misery
ROBERT HERRICK
The Argument of His Book
Delight in Disorder
His Farewell to Sack
Corinna’s Going A-Maying
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home
Upon Julia’s Clothes
GEORGE HERBERT
The Altar
Redemption
Easter Wings
Affliction (1)
Prayer (1)
Jordan (1)
Church-Monuments
The Windows
Denial
Virtue
Man
Jordan (2)
Time
The Bunch of Grapes
The Collar
The Pulley
The Flower
Discipline
Death
Love (3)
ANDREW MARVELL
The Coronet
Bermudas
A Dialogue between the Soul and Body
The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn
To His Coy Mistress
The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers
The Mower against Gardens
Damon the Mower
The Garden
An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return From Ireland
KATHERINE PHILIPS
A Married State
Upon the Double Murder of King Charles
On the Third of September, 1651
To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship
Friendship’s Mystery, To my Dearest Lucasia
On the Death of My First and Dearest Child, Hector Philips
JOHN MILTON
L’Allegro
Il Penseroso
Lycidas
Sonnets
Sonnet 7 (“How soon hath Time the subtle thief of youth”)
Sonnet 16 (To the Lord General Cromwell)
Sonnet 18 (On the Late Massacre in Piedmont)
Sonnet 19 (“When I consider how my light is spent”)
Sonnet 23 (“Methought I saw my late espoused saint”)
from Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England
from Paradise Lost
The Verse
Argument to Book 1
Book 1
Argument to Book 2
Book 2
Argument to Book 3
from Book 3
Argument to Book 4
from Book 4
Argument to Book 5
Argument to Book 6
Argument to Book 7
from Book 7
Argument to Book 8
Argument to Book 9
Book 9
Argument to Book 10
Argument to Book 11
Argument to Book 12
from Book 12
In Context: Illustrating Paradise Lost
THE RESTORATION AND THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Introduction to The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century
Religion, Government, and Party Politics
Empiricism, Skepticism, and Religious Dissent
Industry, Commerce, and the Middle Class
Ethical Dilemmas in a Changing Nation
Print Culture
Poetry
Theater
The Novel
The Development of the English Language
History of the Language and of Print Culture
JOHN DRYDEN
Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem
Mac Flecknoe
To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
from An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
SAMUEL PEPYS
from The Diary (September 1-5, 1666)
In Context: Other Accounts of the Great Fire
from The London Gazette (September 3-10, 1666)
APHRA BEHN
The Disappointment
Oroonoko: or, The Royal Slave. A True History
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY
The Country Wife
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
A Satire on Charles II
A Satire against Reason and Mankind
Love and Life: A Song
The Disabled Debauchee
A Letter from Artemisia in the Town to Chloe in the Country
The Imperfect Enjoyment
Impromptu on Charles II
DANIEL DEFOE
A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal
from Robinson Crusoe
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
In Context: Illustrating Robinson Crusoe
from A Journal of the Plague Year
ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA
from The Spleen: A Pindaric Poem
The Introduction
A Letter to Daphnis, April 2, 1685
To Mr. F., Now Earl of W.
The Unequal Fetters
By neer resemblance that Bird betray’d
A Nocturnal Reverie
JONATHAN SWIFT
A Description of a City Shower
Stella’s Birthday [written in the year 1718]
Stella’s Birthday (1727)
The Lady’s Dressing Room
from Gulliver’s Travels
Part 1: A Voyage to Lilliput
Part 2: A Voyage to Brobdingnag
Part 4: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
A Modest Proposal
In Context: Sermons and Tracts: Backgrounds to A Modest Proposal
from Jonathan Swift, “Causes of the Wretched Condition of Ireland”
from Jonathan Swift, A Short View of the State of Ireland
ALEXANDER POPE
The Rape of the Lock: An Heroi-Comical Poem in Five Cantos
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
Eloisa To Abelard
from An Essay on Man
The Design
Epistle 1
Epistle 2
An Epistle from Mr. Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
Saturday. The Small Pox
The Reasons that Induced Dr. S. to Write a Poem called The Lady’s Dressing Room
The Lover: A Ballad
Epistle from Mrs. Y[onge] to Her Husband
Selected Letters
To Wortley [28 March 1710]
To Philippa Mundy, 25 Sept. [1711]
To Philippa Mundy [c. 2 Nov. 1711]
To Wortley [c. 26 July 1712]
From Wortley [13 Aug. 1712]
To Wortley [15 Aug. 1712]
To Wortley [15 Aug. 1712]
To Lady Mar, 17 Nov. [1716]
To Lady —, 1 April [1717]
To Lady Mar, 1 April [1717]
To [Sarah Chiswell], 1 April [1717]
To Alexander Pope [Sept. 1718]
To Sir James Steuart [14 Nov. 1758]
ELIZA HAYWOOD
Fantomina: or, Love in a Maze
In Context: The Eighteenth-Century Sexual Imagination
from A Present for a Servant-Maid
from Venus in the Cloister; or, The Nun in Her Smock
CONTEXTS: PRINT CULTURE, STAGE CULTURE
from Nahum Tate, The History of King Lear
from Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber
from Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immortality and Profaneness of the English Stage
Introduction
from Chapter 1: The Immodesty of the Stage
from Chapter 4: The Stage-Poets Make Their Principal Persons Vicious and Reward Them at the End of the Play
from Joseph Addison, The Spectator No. 18
from The Licensing Act of 1737
from The Statute of Anne
from James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
Joseph Addison, The Tatler No. 224
from Samuel Johnson, The Idler No. 30
from Clara Reeve, The Progress of Romance
from James Lackington, Memoirs of the Forty-Five First Years of the Life of James Lackington, Bookseller
from Thomas Erskine, “Speech as Prosecution in the Seditious-Libel Trial of Thomas Williams for Publishing Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine”
JAMES THOMSON
Winter
Rule, Britannia
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Vanity of Human Wishes
On the Death of Dr. Robert Levett
from The Rambler
No. 4 [On Fiction]
No. 60 [On Biography]
No. 155 [On Becoming Acquainted with Our Real Characters]
from The Idler
No. 31 [On Idleness]
No. 49 [Will Marvel]
No. 81 [On Native Americans]
from A Dictionary of the English Language
from The Preface
Selected Entries
from The Preface to The Works of William Shakespeare
from Lives of the English Poets
from John Milton
from Alexander Pope
Letters
To Mrs. Thrale (10 July 1780)
To Mrs. Thrale (19 June 1783)
To Mrs. Thrale (2 July 1784)
To Mrs. Thrale (8 July 1784)
THOMAS GRAY
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
CHRISTOPHER SMART
from Jubilate Agno
[MY CAT JEOFFRY]
WILLIAM COWPER
Light Shining Out of Darkness
from The Task
Advertisement
from Book 1: The Sofa
from Book 6: The Winter Walk at Noon
The Castaway
LABORING-CLASS POETS
Stephen Duck
The Thresher’s Labour
Mary Collier
The Woman’s Labour: To Mr. Stephen Duck
Mary Leapor
An Epistle to a Lady
To a Gentleman with a Manuscript Play
HESTER THRALE PIOZZI
from Hester Thrale’s Journal
31 Dec. 1773
30 Sept. 1774
2 Oct. 1774
23 July 1776
7 Jan. 1777
OLAUDAH EQUIANO OR GUSTAVUS VASSA
from The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano
Chapter 2
In Context: Reactions to Olaudah Equiano’s Work
from The Analytic Review, May 1789
from The Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1789
from The Monthly Review, June 1789
from The General Magazine and Impartial Review, July 1789
APPENDICES
Reading Poetry
Maps
Monarchs and Prime Ministers of Great Britain
Glossary of Terms
British Money
Texts and Contexts: Chronological Chart
Bibliography
Permissions Acknowledgments
Index of First Lines
Index of Authors and Titles