Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

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

MARGARET CAVENDISH

The Poetess’s Hasty Resolution
An Excuse for so Much Writ Upon My Verses
Of the Theme of Love
A Woman Drest by Age
A Dialogue Betwixt the Body and the Mind
The Hunting of the Hare
from The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World

from To the Reader
The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World
[The Lady Becomes Empress]
[The Empress Brings the Duchess of Newcastle to be Her Scribe]
[The Duchess and the Empress Create their Own Worlds]
The Epilogue to the Reader

from Sociable Letters

Letter 55
Letter 143
Letter 163

The Convent of Pleasure

from A True Relation of My Birth, Breeding, and Life

JOHN AUBREY
from Brief Lives

Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans
John Milton
Andrew Marvell

JOHN BUNYAN

from The Pilgrim’s Progress

The Author’s Apology for His Book
from The Second Part

JOHN DRYDEN

Absalom and Achitophel
Mac Flecknoe; Or, a Satire upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S.
Religio Laici or A Layman’s Faith (excerpts)
To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day
Cymon and Iphigenia, from Boccace
from An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

SAMUEL PEPYS

from The Diary (September 1-5, 1666)

In Context: Other Accounts of the Great Fire

The Great Fire of London, 1666

from The London Gazette (September 3-10, 1666)

CONTEXTS: MIND AND GOD, FAITH AND DOUBT

from John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

from Book 2, “Of Ideas,” Chapter 1
from Book 2, Chapter 23

from Mary Astell, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694)
from Judith Drake, An Essay in Defense of the Female Sex (1696)
from Eliza Haywood, The Female Spectator No. 10 (February 1745)
from The Spectator No. 7 (March 8, 1711)
Isaac Watts, “Against Idleness and Mischief” (1715)
Isaac Watts, “Man Frail, and Good Eternal” (1719)
from David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

from Section 10: “Of Miracles”

from James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

APHRA BEHN

The Disappointment
On a Juniper Tree, Cut Down to Make Busks

The Feigned Courtesans

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
In Context: The Lessons of Rochester’s Life

DANIEL DEFOE

A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal
from Robinson Crusoe

Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six

In Context: Illustrating Robinson Crusoe
from A Journal of the Plague Year

ANNE FINCH

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

MARY ASTELL

from A Serious Proposal to the Ladies
Reflections Upon Marriage

from The Preface

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
Verses on the Death of Dr Swift, D.S.P.D.
from Gulliver’s Travels

Part One—A Voyage to Lilliput
Part Two—A Voyage to Brobdingnag

Part Three—A Voyage to Laputa

Part Four—A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms

In Context: Gulliver’s Travels in its Time

from Letter from Swift to Alexander Pope, 29 September 1725
from Letter from Swift to Alexander Pope, 26 November 1725
Letter from “Richard Sympson” to Benjamin Motte, 8 August 1726
from Letter from John Gay and Alexander Pope to Swift, 17 November 1726
from Letter from Alexander Pope to Swift, 26 November 1726

A Modest Proposal

In Context: Sermons and Tracts: Backgrounds to “A Modest Proposal”

from Jonathan Swift, “Causes of the Wretched Condition of Ireland” (1726)
from Jonathan Swift, A Short View of the State of Ireland (1727)

JOSEPH ADDISON

from The Spectator

No. 285, Saturday, January 26, 1712 [On the Language of Paradise Lost]
No. 414, Wednesday, June 25, 1712 [Nature, Art, Gardens]

JOHN GAY

The Beggar’s Opera

ALEXANDER POPE

Windsor-Forest
The Rape of the Lock: An Heroi-Comical Poem in Five Cantos

To Mrs. Arabella Fermor
Canto 1
Canto 2
Canto 3
Canto 4
Canto 5

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
Epistle 2. To a Lady
An Essay on Criticism

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
The Spectator No. 573, July 28, 1714 [From the President of the Widow’s Club]
A Plain Account of the Inoculating of the Smallpox by a Turkey Merchant
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 Lady Mar [Sept. 1727]
To Lady Bute 5 Jan. [1748]
To Lady Bute 19 Feb. [1750]
To Wortley 10 Oct. [1753]
To Lady Bute [30 Nov. (?) 1753]
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 (1743)
from Venus in the Cloister; or, The Nun in Her Smock (1725)

CONTEXTS: PRINT CULTURE, STAGE CULTURE

from Nahum Tate, The History of King Lear (1681)

from Act 5

from Colley Cibber, An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber (1740)

from Jeremy Collier, A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698)

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 (March 21, 1711)

from The Licensing Act of 1737

from The Statute of Anne (1710)

from James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

Joseph Addison, The Tatler No. 224 (September 14, 1710)

from Samuel Johnson, The Idler No. 30 (November 11, 1758)

from Clara Reeve, “Evening 7,” from The Progress of Romance, through Times, Countries, Manners; with Remarks on the Good and Bad Effects of it, on them Respectively; in a Course of Evening Conversations (1785)

from James Lackington, Memoirs of the Forty-Five First Years of the Life of James Lackington, Bookseller (1792)

from Thomas Erskine, Speech as Prosecution in the Seditious-Libel Trial of Thomas Williams for Publishing Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine (1797)

JAMES THOMSON

The Seasons

Winter

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Rule, Britannia

SAMUEL JOHNSON

The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated
On the Death of Dr. Robert Levett
from The Rambler

No. 4 [On Fiction]
No. 12 [Cruelty of Employers]
No. 60 [On Biography]
No. 155 [On Becoming Acquainted with Our Real Characters]

from The Idler

No. 26 [Betty Broom]
No. 29 [Betty Broom, cont.]
No. 31 [On Idleness]
No. 49 [Will Marvel]
No. 81 [On Native Americans]

from A Dictionary of the English Language

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 (London, 10 July 1780)
To Mrs. Thrale (Bolt Court, Fleet Street, 19 June 1783)
To Mrs. Thrale (2 July 1784)
To Mrs. Thrale (London, 8 July 1784)

THOMAS GRAY

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes
Sonnet on the Death of Mr. Richard West
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

The Bard

POPULAR BALLADS

Robin Hood and Alan a Dale
Edward, Edward
Tam Lin
The Death of Robin Hood
A Lyke-Wake Dirge
Mary Hamilton

HORACE WALPOLE

The Castle of Otranto

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
In Context: The Origins of The Castle of Otranto

from a Letter by Walpole to the Reverend William Cole, 9 March 1765

In Context: Reactions to The Castle of Otranto

from The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal Volume 32 (1764)
from The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal Volume 32 (1765)
from William Warburton, a footnote to line 146 of Alexander Pope’s poem First Epistle to The Second Book of Horace Imitated, in Warburton’s edition of Pope’s verse
from William Hazlitt, “On the English Novelists” (1819)
from Sir Walter Scott, “Introduction” to the 1811 edition of The Castle of Otranto

WILLIAM COLLINS

Ode to Fear

CHRISTOPHER SMART

from Jubilate Agno [My Cat Jeoffry]

CONTEXTS: THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
(Please note that this Contexts section also appears in volume 4 of the bound-book component of the anthology. It is included here as well for the benefit of those focusing on slavery in the context of Restoration and 18th century literature.)

from John Newton, A Slave Trader’s Journal
from Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species
from Alexander Falconbridge, Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa
William Cowper, Sweet Meat has Sour Sauce or, The Slave-Trader in the Dumps
from William Wilberforce, “Speech to the House of Commons,” 13 May 1789
Proponents of Slavery

from Rev. Robert Boncher Nicholls, Observations, Occasioned by the Attempts Made in England to Effect the Abolition of the Slave Trade
from Anonymous, Thoughts on the Slavery of Negroes, as it Affects the British Colonies in the West Indies: Humbly Submitted to the Consideration of Both Houses of Parliament
from Gordon Turnbull, An Apology of Negro Slavery; or, the West Indian Planters Vindicated from the Charge of Inhumanity

from Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Men
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, “Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade
William Blake, Images of Slavery
from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On the Slave Trade
from William Earle, Obi; or, the History of Three-Fingered Jack
Mary Robinson, Poems on Slavery

“The African”
“The Negro Girl”

from Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journal
from Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade
from Matthew “Monk” Lewis, Journal of a West India Slave Proprietor

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The Deserted Village

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
The Retired Cat
On The Loss of the Royal George
My Mary

JAMES BOSWELL

from London Journal

Introduction

from The Life of Samuel Johnson

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
Crumble Hall

Elizabeth Hands

On the Supposition of an Advertisement Appearing in a Morning Paper, of the Publication of a Volume of Poems, by a Servant Maid

CONTEXTS: TOWN AND COUNTRY

Joseph Addison, The Spectator No. 69 (May 19, 1711)
from Daniel Defoe, “On Trade” (from The Complete English Tradesman), Letter 22, “Of the Dignity of Trade in England more than in other Countries” (1726)

from The Female Tatler No. 9 (July 25-27, 1709)

from The Female Tatler No 67 (December 7-9, 1709)
from Anonymous, The Character of a Coffee-House, with the Symptoms of a Town-Wit (1673)
from Anonymous, Coffee-Houses Vindicated (1675)
from Richard Steele, The Spectator No. 155 (August 28, 1711)
William Hogarth, Marriage A-la-Mode
Joseph Addison, The Spectator No. 119 (July 17, 1711)
from Joseph Addison, The Spectator No. 414 (June 25, 1712)
from Alexander Pope, Letter to Edward Blount (2 June 1725)
from Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757)

Of the Sublime
Of the Passion Caused by the Sublime
The Sublime and Beautiful Compared

HESTER THRALE PIOZZI

from Hester Thrale’s Journal

Selected Letters

To Samuel Johnson (4 July 1784)
To Samuel Johnson (15 July 1784)
To the Ladies of Liangollen (2 May 1800)
To the Reverend Leonard Chappelow (13 May 1800)
To the Reverend Robert Gray (13 May 1801)
To the Reverend Robert Gray (13 May 1801)
To the Reverend Chappelow (18 June 1804)
To Penelope Sophia Pennington (19 August 1804)

OLAUDAH EQUIANO or GUSTAVUS VASSA

from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano

Chapter 1, 5, 7

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

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

The School for Scandal

FRANCES BURNEY

The Witlings

In Context: Journals and Letters

from Letter: Frances Burney to Susanna Burney, 3 September 1778
from Letter: Frances Burney to Dr. Charles Burney, c. 13 August 1779
from Oliver Goldsmith’s “An Essay on Theatre; or, a Comparison between Laughing and Sentimental Comedy” (1773)

PHILLIS WHEATLEY

To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth
On Being Brought from Africa to America
To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty
On the Death of the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield
A Farewell To America: To Mrs. S.W.
A Funeral Poem on the Death of C.E., an Infant of Twelve Months
To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works
In Context: Letters Concerning Black or Slave Writers

APPENDICES

Reading Poetry

Maps

Monarchs and Prime Ministers of Great Britain

Glossary of Terms

Texts and Contexts: A Chronological Chart

Bibliography

Permissions Acknowledgments

Index of First Lines

Index of Authors and Titles

Posted on October 29, 2015