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Title: A History of English Literature
Author: Robert Huntington Fletcher
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7201]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on March 26, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ***
Produced by Branko Collin, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
A History of English Literature
by Robert Huntington Fletcher
TO MY MOTHER TO WHOM I OWE A LIFETIME OF A MOTHER’S MOST SELF-SACRIFICING
DEVOTION
PREFACE
This book aims to provide a general manual of English Literature for
students in colleges and universities and others beyond the high-school
age. The first purposes of every such book must be to outline the
development of the literature with due regard to national life, and to give
appreciative interpretation of the work of the most important authors. I
have written the present volume because I have found no other that, to my
mind, combines satisfactory accomplishment of these ends with a selection
of authors sufficiently limited for clearness and with adequate accuracy
and fulness of details, biographical and other. A manual, it seems to me,
should supply a systematic statement of the important facts, so that the
greater part of the student’s time, in class and without, may be left free
for the study of the literature itself.
I hope that the book may prove adaptable to various methods and conditions
of work. Experience has suggested the brief introductory statement of main
literary principles, too often taken for granted by teachers, with much
resulting haziness in the student’s mind. The list of assignments and
questions at the end is intended, of course, to be freely treated. I hope
that the list of available inexpensive editions of the chief authors may
suggest a practical method of providing the material, especially for
colleges which can provide enough copies for class use. Poets, of course,
may be satisfactorily read in volumes of, selections; but to me, at least,
a book of brief extracts from twenty or a hundred prose authors is an
absurdity. Perhaps I may venture to add that personally I find it advisable
to pass hastily over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and so gain
as much time as possible for the nineteenth.
R. H. F.
_August, 1916._
CONTENTS
PRELIMINARY. HOW TO STUDY AND JUDGE LITERATURE
A TABULAR VIEW OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
REFERENCE BOOKS
I. PERIOD I. THE BRITONS AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS.
TO A.D. 1066
II. PERIOD II. THE NORMAN-FRENCH PERIOD.
A.D. 1066 TO ABOUT 1350
III. PERIOD III. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
ABOUT 1350 TO ABOUT 1500
IV. THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA
V. PERIOD IV. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. THE
RENAISSANCE AND THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH
VI. THE DRAMA FROM ABOUT 1550 TO 1642
VII. PERIOD V. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY,
1603-1660. PROSE AND POETRY
VIII. PERIOD VI. THE RESTORATION, 1660-1700
IX. PERIOD VII. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY,
PSEUDO-CLASSICISM AND THE BEGINNINGS
OF MODERN ROMANTICISM
X. PERIOD VIII. THE ROMANTIC TRIUMPH, 1798
TO ABOUT 1830
XI. PERIOD IX. THE VICTORIAN PERIOD. ABOUT
1830 TO 1901
A LIST OF AVAILABLE EDITIONS FOR THE
STUDY OF IMPORTANT AUTHORS
ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY
INDEX