This book is a unique history of how literature spread and developed through three British nations and most North American states. This anthology gathers the work of great writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Lewis Carroll, John Milton, Edgar Allan Poe, and many more. "The Book of Prefaces offers an unusual and unprecedented look at literature, a treat for any reader.
The First English
c675Caedmon—Genesis
731Bede—Church History of the English
c760Cynewulf—Dream of the Cross
c800Anon—Beowulf
c800Anon—The Earth Tramper
c890Alfred—Gregory's Pastoral Care
c990Aelfric—Genesis
c1066Anon—Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Wasting of Old English Speech and How a New Was Got
English Remade
c1330Rolle—The Psalter
c1360Anon—Cloud of Unknowing
c1360Anon—Voyages to Mandeville (prose)
c1370Anon—Mawndevile's Voiages (verse)
c1375Anon—-Sir Gawain
c1375Barbour—The Bruce
c1377Langland—Piers Plowman
c1385Chaucer—Canterbury Tales
c1390Chaucer—Treatise on the Astrolabe
c1395Wyclif—The Lollard Bible
How Class War Dulled English Literature
A Scots Flowering—Between Two Bibles
c1435James I—The Kingis Quair
1436 Kempe—The Book of Margery Kempe
c1450Anon—Shearmen and Tailor's Coventry Pageant
c1450Anon—Wakefield Play of the Crucifixion
c1477Hary the Minstrel—Wallace
1484 Caxton—Canterbury Tales
1484 Caxton—Kyng Arthur
1490 Caxton—Eneydos
c1495Dunbar—Tretis of Tua Mariit Wemen & the Wedo
c1495Henryson—The Testament of Cresseid
c1513Douglas—Eneados
c1515Anon—Everyman
c1516Skelton—Magnyfyence
A New World: Why Erasmus Wanted Youth Again
English Reforms
1526Tyndal—New Testament (St. John's Gospel)
1529 More—Dialogue Concerning Heresies
1530 Tyndal—The Pentateuch
1531 Bellenden—Boece's Chronicles
1534 Tyndal—New Testament (Unto the Reader)
1535 Coverdale—The Bible
1540 Lyndsay—The Thrie Estaitis
1540 Cranmer—Great Bible
1546 Leland—The Laboriouse Journey
1549 Cranmer—First Prayer Book
1557 Tottel's Songs and Sonnets
1560 Knox—Confession of Faith
1563 Foxe—Actes and Monumentes
1565 Golding—Ovid's Metamorphosis
1570 Ascham—The Scholemaster
1579 North—Pluarch's Lives
1587 Holinshed—Chronicles
1588 Hariot—The New Found Land of Virginia
The Armada Interlude: Peace Proclaims Olives of Endless Age
A Great Flowering
1589 Hakluyt—The Principall Navigations
c1590Marlowe—The Jew of Malta
c1590Marlowe—Tamburlaine
c1590Marlowe—Doctor Faustus
1590 Spenser—The Faerie Queene
1592Greene—Groats-worth of Witte
1593 Hooker—Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie
1596 Shakespeare—Romeo and Juliet
1598 Shakespeare—Henry IV part 2
c1599Shakespeare—Henry V
1601 Donne—Progresse of the Soule & The Anniversary
1602 Jonson—Poetaster
1603 Florio—Essays of Montaigne
1605Bacon—The Advancement of Learning Book I
1611 Chapman—Homer, Prince of Poets
1611 Churchmen—The Bible
1613Beaumont—The Knight of the Burning Pestle
1614 Raleigh—The History of the World
1621 Burton—The Anatomy of the Laws of England
1629 Coke—The Institutes of the Laws of England
Prelude to Revolution: 3 National Bodies Reject Their Head
Between Two Revolutions
1643 Browne—Religio Medici
1646 Vaughan—Poems
1648 Herrick—Hesperides
1651 Taylor—Holy Dying
1651 Winstanley—Law of Freedom on a Platform
1651 Hobbes—Leviathan
1653Walton—The Compleat Angler
1653Urquhart—Translation of Robelais
1660 Pepys—Diary
1663 Bulter—Hudibras
1667 Sprat & Cowley—History of the Royal Society
1668 Milton—Paradise Lost
1670Traherne—Poems
1675 Wycherely—The Country Wife
1678 Bunyan—The Pilgrim's Progress
1681 Behn—The Rover, part 2 & Oroonoko
1681Dalrymple—Institutions of the Law of Scotland
1687 Dryden—The Hind and the Panther
Alterations: a Body Tames its Head
The Establishment
1690 Dryden—Don Sebastian & Aeneis
1690 Locke—Essay Concerning Humane Understanding
1704 Swift—A Tale of a Tub
1704 Newton—Opticks
1709 Watts—Hymns and Spiritual Songs
1710 Congreve—The Way of the World
1710Berkeley—Principles of Human Knowledge
1711 Steele—The Tatler
1711Addison—The Spectator
1714 Mandeville—The Fable of the Bees
1715 Pope—The Iliad
1722 Defoe—Moll Flanders
1724Ramsay—The Ever Green
1728 Gay—The Beggar's Opera
1729 Pope—The Dunciad, Variorum
1734 Pope—An Essay on Man
1739 Hume—Treatise of Human Nature
1742
cf0Fielding—Joseph Andrews
1747 Richardson—Clarissa
1755 Johnson—Dictionary
1760 MacPherson—Fragments of Ancient Poetry
1760 Sterne—Tristram Shandy
1765Blackstone—on the Laws of England
1768 Smellie—Encyclopaedia Britannica
1771 Smollett—Humphry Clinker
1771 Franklin—Autobiography
1776 Bentham—A Fragment on Government
1776 Gibbon—Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
1776Smith—Wealth of Nations
1776 Jefferson—Declaration of Independence
1777 Cook—Voyage Towards the South Pole
1787 Burns—Poems
France Remade: An Interlude
The Disturbed Establishment
1790 Burke—On the Revolution in France
1791 Paine—Rights of Man
1791 Blake—Marriage of Heaven and Hell
1792 Wollstonecraft—Rights of Women
1798 Wordsworth—Lyrical Ballads
1799 Wordsworth—Poem (The Prelude)
1798 Malthus—Essay on Principle of Population
1800Edgeworth—Castle Rackrent
1802 Paley—Natural Theology
1804Blake—Jerusalem & Milton
1813 Owen—New View of Society
1814 Scott—Waverly
1816Coleridge—Kubla Khan
1818 Austen—Northanger Abbey
1201818 Keats—Endymion
1819 Byron—Don Juan
1820Shelley, Percy—Prometheus Unbound
1827 Clare—The Parish
1828 Webster—American English Dictionary
1831 Poe—Poems
1831 Shelley, Mary—Frankenstein
1832 Clare—The Midsummer Cushion
1832Galt—The Member
Reforming an Expanded Middle
Liberal English
1843 Carlyle—Past and Present
1847 Tennyson—The Princess
1848 Thackeray—The Book of Snobs
1849 MacAulay—History of England
1849Brontë—Shirley
1850 Marx—The Communist Manifesto
1851 Hawthorne—Twice-told Tales
1851Melville—Moby-Dick
1851Mayhew—London Labour and London Poor
1852 Stowe—Uncle Tom's Cabin
1854Dickens—Bleak House
1855 Whitman—Leaves of Grass
1855 Longfellow—Song of Hiawatha
1859 Darwin—The Origin of Species
1862 Ruskin—Unto This Last
1866 Eliot—Felix Holt
1869 Mill—The Subjection of Women
1871Eliot—Middlemarch
1872 Reade—The Martyrdom of Man
1874 Thomson—The City of Dreadful Night
1876 0Carroll—The Hunting of the Snark
1876Hopkins—Wreck of the Deutschland
1879 Arnold—Mixed Essays
1884Twain—Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
1884 Browning—Ferishtah's Fancies
1889 Stevenson—The Master of Ballantrae
1891Wilde—The Picture of Dorian Gray
1892 Kipling—Barrack-Room Ballads
1896 Hardy—Jude the Obscure
1897 Conrad—The Nigger of the "Narcissus"
1898 Peirce—Preface to an Unwritten Book
1905 Shaw—The Irrational Knot
1907 Synge—The Playboy of the Western World
1920Owen—Poems
Postscript
Index of Helpers and Contributions
Portraits of Contributors