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

Posted on October 29, 2015