Written by an editorial team whose members are all actively engaged in teaching and in current scholarship, Masters of British Literature is a concise and thoughtfully arranged survey of the key writers whose works have shaped British literature. Featuring major works by the most influential authors in the British literary tradition— Barbauld, Blake, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Barrett Browning, Browning, Tennyson, Shaw, Yeats, Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Heaney, Wolcott, and Rushdie— this anthology is a concise but essential survey of British literature from the Romantic period through the twentieth century. Part of the Penguin Academic series, this text is distinguished for its brevity, economy, and quality. The perfect alternative to lengthy anthologies, it is an affordable introduction to the study of British literature.
THE MIDDLE AGES
BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST
BEOWULF
Response
John Gardner, from Grendel
EARLY ENGLISH NARRATIVE
The Labour Pains of the Ulaid
The Birth of Cú Chulainn
The Naming of Cú Chulainn
EARLY ENGLISH VERSE
To Crinog
Pangur the Cat
Writing in the Wood
The Viking Terror
The Old Woman of Beare
Findabair Remembers Fróech
A Grave Marked with Ogam
from The Voyage of Máel Dúin
THE DREAM OF THE ROOD
THE WANDERER
WULF AND EADWACER and WIFE'S LAMENT
RIDDLES
Three Anglo-Latin Riddles by Aldhelm
Five Old English Riddles
Arthurian Romance
MARIE DE FRANCE
from Lais
Prologue
Lanval
Chevrefoil (The Honeysuckle)
SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT
(Translated by J.R.R. Tolkien)
SIR THOMAS MALORY
Morte Darthur
from Caxton’s Prologue
The Miracle of Galahad
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
The General Prologue (Middle English and modern translation)
The Miller’s Tale
The Introduction
The Tale
The Wife of Bath’s Prologue
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
The Parson’s Tale
The Introduction
[The Remedy for the Sin of Lechery]
Chaucer’s Retraction
To His Scribe Adam
Complaint to His Purse
WILLIAM LANGLAND
Piers Plowman
Prologue
Passus 2
from Passus 6
Passus 8
“PIERS PLOWMAN” AND ITS TIME
The Rising of 1381
Three Poems on the Rising of 1381: John Ball’s First Letter•John Ball’s Second Letter• The Course of Revolt•John Gower:from The Voice of One Crying
Medieval Biblical Drama
THE SECOND PLAY OF THE SHEPHERDS
VERNACULAR RELIGION
The Wycliffite Bible
John 10.11—18
from A Wycliffite Sermon on John 10.11—18
MARGERY KEMPE
The Book of Margery Kempe
The Preface
[Meeting with Bishop of Lincoln and Archbishop of Canterbury]
[Visit with Julian of Norwich]
MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRICS
The Cuckoo Song (“Sumer is icumen in”)
Alisoun (“Bitwene Mersh and Averil”)
I Have a Noble Cock
Abuse of Women (“In every place ye may well see”)
Adam Lay Ibounden
I Sing of a Maiden
In Praise of Mary (“Edi be thu, Hevene Quene”)
Mary Is with Child (“Under a tree”)
Jesus, My Sweet Lover (“Jesu Christ, my lemmon swete”)
Contempt of the World (“Where beth they biforen us weren?”)
WILLIAM DUNBAR
Lament for the Makars
Done Is a Battell
In Secreit Place This Hyndir Nycht
CHRISTINE DE PIZAN
from Book of the City of Ladies
(trans. by Earl Jeffrey Richards)
THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD
JOHN SKELTON
Womanhod, Wanton
Lullay
Knolege, Aquayntance
Manerly Margery Mylk and Ale
Garland of Laurel
To Maystres Jane Blennerhasset
To Maystres Isabell Pennell
To Maystres Margaret Hussey
SIR THOMAS WYATT
The Long Love, That in My Thought Doth Harbor
Companion Reading
Petrarch: Sonnet 140
Whoso List to Hunt
Companion Reading
Petrarch: Sonnet 190
My Galley
They Flee from Me
Some Time I Fled the Fire
My Lute, Awake!
Tagus, Farewell
Forget Not Yet
Blame Not My Lute
Lucks, My Fair Falcon, and Your Fellows All
Stand Whoso List
Mine Own John Poyns
HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY
Love That Doth Reign and Live within My Thought
Th’Assyrians’ King, in Peace with Foul Desire
Set Me Whereas the Sun Doth Parch the Green
The Soote Season
Alas, So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace
Companion Reading
Petrarch: Sonnet 164
So Cruel Prison
London, Hast Thou Accused Me
Wyatt Resteth Here
My Radcliffe, When Thy Reckless Youth Offends
EDMUND SPENSER
The Faerie Queene
A Letter of the Authors
The First Booke of the Faerie Queene
Amoretti
1 (“Happy ye leaves when as those lilly hands”)
4 (“New yeare forth looking out of Janus gate”)
13 (“In that proud port, which her so goodly graceth”)
22 (“This holy season fit to fast and pray”)
62 (“The weary yeare his race now having run”)
65 (“The doubt which ye misdeeme, fayre love, is vaine”)
66 (“To all those happy blessings which ye have”)
68 (“Most glorious Lord of lyfe that on this day”)
75 (“One day I wrote her name upon the strand”)
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
The Apology for Poetry
Astrophil and Stella
1 (“Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show”)
3 (“Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine”)
7 (“When Nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes”)
24 (“Rich fool there be whose base and filthy heart”)
31 (“With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies”)
45 (“Stella oft sees the very face of woe”)
52 (“A strife is grown between Virtue and Love”)
60 (“When my good Angel guides me to the place”)
63 (“O grammar-rules, O now your virtues show”)
68 (“Stella, the only planet of my light”)
71 (“Who will in fairest book of Nature know”)
Second song (“Have I caught my heavenly jewel”)
74 (“I never drank of Aganippe well”)
89 (“Now that, of absence, the most irksome night”)
90 (“Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame”)
104 (“Envious wits, what hath been mine offense”)
106 (“O absent presence, Stella is not here”)
107 (“Stella, since thou so right a princess art”)
108 (“When sorrow (using mine own fire’s might)”)
ISABELLA WHITNEY
The Admonition by the Author
A Careful Complaint by the Unfortunate Author
MARY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE
Even Now That Care
To Thee Pure Sprite
Psalm 71: In Te Domini Speravi (“On thee my trust is grounded”)
Companion Reading
Miles Coverdale: Psalm 71
Psalm 121: Levavi Oculos (“Unto the hills, I now will bend”)
The Doleful Lay of Clorinda
ELIZABETH I
Written with a Diamond on Her Window at Woodstock
Written on a Wall at Woodstock
The Doubt of Future Foes
On Monsieur’s Departure
Speeches
On Marriage
On Mary, Queen of Scots
On Mary’s Execution
To the English Troops at Tilbury, Facing the Spanish Armada
The Golden Speech
AEMILIA LANYER
The Description of Cookham
Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
To the Doubtful Reader
To the Virtuous Reader
[Invocation]
[Against Beauty Without Virtue]
[Pilate's Wife Apologizes for Eve]
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
Response
Sir Walter Raleigh: The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd
The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
Nature That Washed Her Hands in Milk
To the Queen
On the Life of Man
The Author’s Epitaph, Made by Himself
As You Came from the Holy Land
The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana
from Epistle Dedicatory
To the Reader
[The Amazons]
[The Orinoco]
[The King of Aromaia]
[The New World of Guiana]
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Sonnets
1 (“From fairest creatures we desire increase”)
18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”)
20 (“A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted”)
29 (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”)
30 (“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought”)
33 (“Full many a glorious morning have I seen”)
55 (“Not marble nor the gilded monuments”)
60 (“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore”)
71 (“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”)
73 (“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”)
87 (“Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing”)
94 (“They that have pow’r to hurt, and will do none”)
104 (“To me, fair friend, you never can be old”)
116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”)
126 (“O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power”)
129 (“The expense of spirit in a waste of shame”)
130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”)
138 (“When my love swears that she is made of truth”)
144 (“Two loves I have, of comfort and despair”)
152 (“In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn”)
The Tempest
Response
Aime Cesaire: from A Tempest
PERSPECTIVES
Tracts on Women and Gender
Desiderius Erasmus
from In Laude and Praise of Matrimony
Barnabe Riche
from My Lady’s Looking Glass
Margaret Tyler
from Preface to The First Part of the Mirror of Princely Deeds
Joseph Swetnam
from The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women
Rachel Speght
from A Muzzle for Melastomus
Ester Sowernam
from Ester Hath Hanged Haman
Hic Mulier and Haec-Vir
from Hic Mulier; or, The Man-Woman
from Haec-Vir; or, The Womanish-Man
THOMAS CAMPION
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love
There is a garden in her face
Rose-cheeked Laura, come
When thou must home to shades of underground
Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to shore
BEN JONSON
On Something, That Walks Somewhere
On My First Daughter
To John Donne
On My First Son
Inviting a Friend to Supper
To Penshurst
Song to Celia
Queen and Huntress
To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and What He Hath Left Us
JOHN DONNE
The Good Morrow
Song (“Go, and catch a falling star”)
The Sun Rising
The Canonization
A Valediction: of Weeping
Love’s Alchemy
The Flea
A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
The Ecstasy
The Funeral
The Relic
Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed
Holy Sonnets
1 (“As due by many titles I resign”)
2 (“Oh my black soul! Now thou art summoned”)
3 (“This is my play’s last scene, here heavens appoint”)
4 (“At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow”)
5 (“If poisonous minerals, and if that tree”)
6 (“Death be not proud, though some have called thee”)
10 (“Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you”)
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
[“For whom the bell tolls”]
LADY MARY WORTH
Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
1 (“When night’s black mantle could most darkness prove”)
5 (“Can pleasing sight misfortune ever bring?”)
16 (“Am I thus conquered? Have I lost the powers”)
55 (“How like a fire does love increase in me”)
68 (“My pain, still smothered in my grièved breast”)
from The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania
ROBERT HERRICK
Hesperides
The Argument of His Book
To His Book
Corinna’s Going A-Maying
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
His Prayer to Ben Jonson
Upon Julia’s Clothes
The Christian Militant
To His Tomb-Maker
Upon Himself Being Buried
His Last Request to Julia
GEORGE HERBERT
The Altar
Redemption
Easter
Easter Wings
Man
Jordan (2)
Time
The Collar
The Pulley
The Forerunners
Love (3)
ANDREW MARVELL
The Coronet
Bermudas
To His Coy Mistress
The Definition of Love
An Horatian Ode Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland
KATHERINE PHILIPS
Friendship in Emblem, or the Seal
Upon the Double Murder of King Charles
On the Third of September, 1651
To the Truly Noble, and Obliging Mrs. Anne Owen
To Mrs. Mary Awbrey at Parting
To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship
JOHN MILTON
Lycidas
How Soon Hath Time
On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament
To the Lord General Cromwell
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint
Paradise Lost
Book 1
Book 2
Book 9
Book 12
THE RESTORATION and the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
SAMUEL PEPYS
from The Diary
[First Entries]
[The Coronation of Charles II]
[The Fire of London]
MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
POEMS AND FANCIES
The Poetress’s Hasty Resolution
The Poetress’s Petition
An Apology for Writing So Much upon This Book
from The Description of a New Blazing World
from To the Reader
[Creating Worlds]
[Empress, Duchess, Duke]
Epilogue
JOHN DRYDEN
Mac Flecknoe
To the Memory of Mr. Oldham
Alexander’s Feast
APHRA BEHN
The Disappointment
To Lysander, on Some Verses He Writ
To Lysander at the Music-Meeting
A Letter to Mr. Creech at Oxford
To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than
Woman
JOHN WILMOT, EARL OF ROCHESTER
Against Constancy
The Disabled Debauchee
Song (“Love a woman? You’re an ass!”)
The Imperfect Enjoyment
Upon Nothing
A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY
The Country Wife
DANIEL DEFOE
A Journal of the Plague Year
[At the Burial Pit]
[Encounter with a Waterman]
Perspectives
Reading Papers
News and Comment
from Mercurius Publicus [Anniversary of the Regicide]
from The London Gazette [The Fire of London]
from The Daily Courant No. 1 [Editorial Policy]
Daniel Defoe: from A Review of the State of the British
Nation, Vol. 4, No. 21 [The New Union]
from The Craftsman No. 307 [Vampires in Britain]
Periodical Personae
Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 1 [Introducing Mr. Bickerstaff]
Joseph Addison: from Spectator No. 1 [Introducing Mr. Spectator]
from Female Spectator, Vol. 1, No. 1 [The Author’s Intent]
Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 18 [The News Writers in Danger]
Joseph Addison: from Tatler No. 155 [The Political Upholsterer]
Joseph Addison: from Spectator No. 10 [The Spectator and Its Readers]
Getting, Spending, Speculating
Joseph Addison: Spectator No. 69 [Royal Exchange]
Richard Steele: Spectator No. 11 [Inkle and Yarico]
Daniel Defoe: from A Review of the State of the British Nation, Vol. 1, No. 43 [Weak Foundations]
Advertisements from the Spectator
Women and Men, Manners and Marriage
Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 25 [Duellists]
Daniel Defoe: from A Review of the State of the British Nation, Vol. 9, No. 34 [A Duellist’s Conscience]
from The Athenian Mercury
Richard Steele: from Tatler No. 104 [Jenny Distaff Newly Married]
Joseph Addison: Spectator No. 128 [Variety of Temper]
Eliza Haywood: from The Female Spectator, Vol. 1, No. 1 [Seomanthe’s Elopement]
Eliza Haywood: from The Female Spectator, Vol. 2, No. 10 [Women’s Education]
JONATHAN SWIFT
A Description of the Morning
A Description of a City Shower
Stella’s Birthday, 1719
Stella’s Birthday, 1727
The Lady’s Dressing Room
Response
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: The Reasons that induced Dr. S. to write a Poem called The Lady’s Dressing Room
Gulliver’s Travels
from Part 3. A Voyage to Laputa
Part 4. A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
A Modest Proposal
“A Modest Proposal” and Its Time
William Pettyfrom Political Arithmetic
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
The Rape of the Lock
The Iliad
from Preface [On Translation]
from Book 12 [Sarpedon’s Speech]
from An Essay on Man
Epistle 1
To the Reader
The Design
Argument
from The Dunciad
from Book the Fourth
[The Goddess Coming in Her Majesty]
[The Geniuses of the Schools]
[Young Gentlemen Returned from Travel]
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
from The Turkish Embassy Letters
To Lady—[On the Turkish Baths]
To Lady Mar [On Turkish Dress]
Letter to Lady Bute [On Her Granddaughter]
Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband
The Lover: A Ballad
JOHN GAY
The Beggar’s Opera
JAMES THOMSON
from The Seasons
from Autumn
Rule, Britannia
THOMAS GRAY
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The Vanity of Human Wishes
THE RAMBLER
No. 4 [On Fiction]
No. 5 [On Spring]
THE IDLER
No. 31 [On Idleness]
No. 84 [On Autobiography]
JAMES BOSWELL
from London Journal
[A Scot in London]
[First Meeting with Johnson]
from The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
[Introduction; Boswell’s Method]
[Dinner with Wilkes]
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Deserted Village
ELIZA HAYWOOD
Fantomina: Or, Love in a Maze
Credits
Index
THE ROMANTICS and THEIR CONTEMPORARIES
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
The Mouse’s Petition to Dr. Priestley
On a Lady’s Writing
Inscription for an Ice-House
To a Little Invisible Being Who Is Expected Soon to Become Visible
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
CHARLOTTE SMITH
FROM ELEGIAC SONNETS AND OTHER POEMS
To the Moon
“Sighing I see yon little troop at play”
To melancholy. Written on the banks of the Arun October, 1785
The sea view
The Dead Beggar
from Beachy Head
WILLIAM BLAKE
All Religions Are One
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE
from Songs of Innocence
Introduction
The Shepherd
The Ecchoing Green
The Lamb
The Little Black Boy
The Blossom
The Chimney Sweeper
The Little Boy lost
The Little Boy found
The Divine Image
HOLY THURSDAY
Nurses Song
Infant Joy
A Dream
On Anothers Sorrow
from Songs of Experience
Introduction
EARTH’S Answer
The CLOD & the PEBBLE
HOLY THURSDAY
The Little Girl Lost
The Little Girl Found
The Chimney Sweeper
NURSES Song
The SICK ROSE
The FLY
The Angel
The Tyger
My Pretty ROSE TREE
AH! SUN-FLOWER
THE GARDEN of LOVE
LONDON
The Human Abstract
INFANT SORROW
The Little BOY Lost
The Little GIRL Lost
The School-Boy
A Divine Image
PERSPECTIVES
The Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade
Olaudah Equiano
from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Mary Prince
from The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave
Thomas Bellamy
The Benevolent Planters
John Newton
Amazing Grace!
Ann Cromartie Yearsley
from A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave-Trade
William Cowper
Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce
The Negro’s Complaint
Hannah More and Eaglesfield Smith
The Sorrows of Yamba
Robert Southey
from Poems Concerning the Slave-Trade
Dorothy Wordsworth
from The Grasmere Journals
Thomas Clarkson
from The History of the Rise, Progress, & Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament
William Wordsworth
To Toussaint L’Ouverture
To Thomas Clarkson
from The Prelude
from Humanity
Letter to Mary Ann Rawson (May 1833)
The Edinburgh Review
from Abstract of the Information laid on the Table of the House of Commons, on the Subject of the Slave Trade
George Gordon, Lord Byron
from Detached Thoughts
MARY ROBINSON
Ode to Beauty
January, 1795
from Sappho and Phaon, in a Series of Legitimate Sonnets
III. The Bower of Pleasure
IV. Sappho discovers her Passion
VII. Invokes Reason
XI. Rejects the Influence of Reason
XII. Previous to her Interview with Phaon
XVIII. To Phaon
XXX. Bids farewell to Lesbos
XXXVII. Foresees her Death
The Old Beggar
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
from To M.Talleyrand-Périgord, Late Bishop of Autun
Introduction
from Chapter 1. The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered
from Chapter 2. The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed
JOANNA BAILLIE
London
A Mother to Her Waking Infant
A Child to His Sick Grandfather
Thunder
Song: Woo’d and Married and A’
Literary Ballads
RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY
Sir Patrick Spence
ROBERT BURNS
To a Mouse
To a Louse
Flow gently, sweet Afton
Ae fond kiss
Comin’ Thro’ the Rye (1)
Comin’ Thro’ the Rye (2)
A Red, Red Rose
Auld Lang Syne
The Fornicator. A New Song
SIR WALTER SCOTT
Lord Randal
THOMAS MOORE
The harp that once through Tara’s halls
Believe me, if all those endearing young charms
The time I’ve lost in wooing
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
LYRICAL BALLARDS
Simon Lee
Anecdote for Fathers
We are seven
Expostulation and Reply
Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey
LYRICAL BALLARDS (1800, 1802)
from Preface
[The Principal Object of the Poems. Humble and Rustic Life]
[“The Spontaneous Overflow of Powerful Feelings”]
[The Language of Poetry]
[What is a Poet?]
[“Emotion Recollected in Tranquillity”]
“Strange fits of passion have I known”
Song (“She dwelt among th’ untrodden ways”)
“A slumber did my spirit seal”
Lucy Gray
Poor Susan
Nutting
Michael
RESPONSES
Francis Jeffrey: [“the new poetry”]
Charles Lamb: from a letter to William Wordsworth
Charles Lamb: from a letter to Thomas Manning
SONNETS, 1802–1807
Prefatory Sonnet (“Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room”)
Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802
“The world is too much with us”
“It is a beauteous Evening”
London, 1802
from THE PRELUDE, OR GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND
Book First. Introduction, Childhood, and School time
from Book Second. School time continued
[Two Consciousnesses]
[Blessed Infant Babe]
from Book Sixth. Cambridge, and the Alps
[Arrival in France]
[Travelling in the Alps. Simplon Pass]
from Book Ninth. Residence in France
[Revolution, Royalists, and Patriots]
from Book Tenth. Residence in France and French Revolution
[The Reign of Terror. Confusion. Return to England]
from Book Eleventh. Imagination, How Impaired and Restored
[Imagination Restored by Nature]
[“Spots of Time.” Two Memories from Childhood and Later Reflections]
“I travell’d among unknown Men”
Resolution and Independence
“I wandered lonely as a cloud”
“My heart leaps up”
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Surprized by joy
Scorn not the Sonnet
DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
Grasmere—A Fragment
Thoughts on My Sick-bed
When Shall I Tread Your Garden Path?
Lines Written (Rather Say Begun) on the Morning of Sunday April 6th
from The Grasmere Journals
[Home Alone]
[A Leech Gatherer]
[A Woman Beggar]
[An Old Soldier]
[The Grasmere Mailman]
[A Vision of the Moon]
[A Field of Daffodils]
[A Beggar Woman from Cockermouth]
[The Circumstances of “Composed upon Westminster Bridge”]
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Sonnet to the River Otter
The Eolian Harp
This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison
Frost at Midnight
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1817)
Christabel
Kubla Khan
The Pains of Sleep
Dejection: An Ode
Biographia Literaria
Chapter 4
[Wordsworth’s Earlier Poetry]
Chapter 11
[The Profession of Literature]
Chapter 13
[Imagination and Fancy]
Chapter 14
[Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads—Preface to the Second Edition—The Ensuing Controversy]
[Philosophic Definitions of a Poem and Poetry]
from Lectures on Shakespeare
[Mechanic vs. Organic Form]
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
She walks in beauty
So, we’ll go no more a-roving
Manfred
" MANFRED' AND ITS TIME
THE BYRONIC HERO
Byron’s Earlier HeroesfromThe Giaour• fromThe Corsair fromLara • Prometheus• from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto the Third[Napoleon Buonaparte]
Samuel Taylor ColeridgefromThe Statesman’s Manual [“Satanic Pride and Rebellious Self-Idolatry”]
Caroline LambfromGlenarvon
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelleyfrom Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus
Felicia HemansfromThe Widow of Crescentius
Percy Bysshe Shelleyfrom Preface to Prometheus Unbound • from Prometheus Unbound, Act 1
Robert Southeyfrom Preface to A Vision of Judgement
George Gordon, Lord Byronfrom The Vision of Judgement
CHILD HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE
from Canto the Third
[Thunderstorm in the Alps]
[Byron’s Strained Idealism. Apostrophe to His Daughter]
from Canto the Fourth
[Rome. Political Hopes]
[Apostrophe to the Ocean. Conclusion]
DON JUAN
Dedication
Canto 1
from Canto 7 [Critique of Military “Glory”]
from Canto 11 [Juan in England]
Stanzas (“When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home”)
On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
To Wordsworth
Mont Blanc
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
Ozymandias
Sonnet: Lift not the painted veil
Sonnet: England in 1819
Ode to the West Wind
To a Sky-Lark
To—(“Music, when soft voices die”)
Adonais
The Cloud
from Hellas
Chorus (“Worlds on worlds are rolling ever”)
Chorus (“The world’s great age begins anew”)
from A Defence of Poetry
FELICIA HEMANS
from TALES, AND HISTORIC SCENES, IN VERSE
Evening Prayer, at a Girls’ School
Casabianca
from RECORDS OF WOMAN
Indian Woman’s Death-Song
Joan of Arc, in Rheims
The Homes of England
The Graves of a Household
Corinne at the Capitol
Woman and Fame
JOHN CLARE
Written in November (manuscript)
Written in November
Songs Eternity
[The Mouse’s Nest]
JOHN KEATS
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER
Young Poets
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.
“To one who has been long in city pent”
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
On sitting down to read King Lear once again
Sonnet: When I have fears
The Eve of St. Agnes
La Belle Dame sans Mercy
THE ODES OF 1819
Ode to Psyche
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode on Indolence
Ode on Melancholy
To Autumn
This living hand
Bright Star
LETTERS
To George and Thomas Keats [“Intensity” and “Negative Capability”]
To Richard Woodhouse [The “Camelion Poet” vs. The “Egotistical Sublime”]
To Charles Brown [Keats’s Last Letter]
THE VICTORIAN AGE
THOMAS CARLYLE
from Gospel of Mammonism [The Irish Widow]
from Labour [Know Thy Work]
from Democracy [Liberty to Die by Starvation]
Captains of Industry
JOHN STUART MILL
On Liberty
from Chapter 2. Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
from Chapter 3. Of Individuality, as One of the Elements of Well-Being
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
To George Sand: A Desire
To George Sand: A Recognition
A Year’s Spinning
Sonnets from the Portuguese
1 (“I thought once how Theocritus had sung”)
13 (“And wilt thou have me fashion into speech”)
14 (“If thou must love me, let it be for nought”)
21 (“Say over again, and yet once over again”)
22 (“When our two souls stand up erect and strong”)
43 (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”)
Aurora Leigh
Book 1
[Self-Portrait]
[Her Mother’s Portrait]
[Aurora’s Education]
[Discovery of Poetry]
Book 2
[Woman and Artist]
[No Female Christ]
Book 5
[Epic Art and Modern Life]
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The Kraken
Mariana
The Lady of Shalott
The Lotos-Eaters
Ulysses
Tithonus
Break, Break, Break
The Epic [Morte d’Arthur]
THE PRINCESS
Sweet and Low
Come Down, O Maid
[The Woman’s Cause Is Man’s]
from In Memoriam A. H. H.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Idylls of the King
The Coming of Arthur
The Higher Pantheism
Flower in the Crannied Wall
Crossing the Bar
CHARLES DARWIN
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
fromChapter 3. Struggle for Existence
PERSPECTIVES
Religion and Science
Thomas Babington Macaulay
from Lord Bacon
Charles Dickens
from Sunday Under Three Heads
David Friedrich Strauss
from The Life of Jesus Critically Examined
Charlotte Brontë
from Jane Eyre
Arthur Hugh Clough
Epi-strauss-ium
The Latest Decalogue
from Dipsychus
John William Colenso
from The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined
John Henry Cardinal Newman
from Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Thomas Henry Huxley
from Evolution and Ethics
Sir Edmund Gosse
from Father and Son
ROBERT BROWNING
Porphyria’s Lover
Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
My Last Duchess
The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church
Meeting at Night
Parting at Morning
A Toccata of Galuppi’s
Memorabilia
Love Among the Ruins
“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”
Fra Lippo Lippi
The Last Ride Together
Andrea del Sarto
CHARLES DICKENS
A Christmas Carol
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
A Scandal in Bohemia
JOHN RUSKIN
Modern Painters
from Definition of Greatness in Art
from Of Water, As Painted by Turner
The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Isolation. To Marguerite
To Marguerite—Continued
Dover Beach
RESPONSE
Anthony Hecht: The Dover Bitch
Lines Written in Kensington Gardens
The Buried Life
The Scholar-Gipsy
Culture and Anarchy
from Sweetness and Light
from Doing as One Likes
from Hebraism and Hellenism
from Conclusion
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
The Blessed Damozel
The Woodspurge
The House of Life
The Sonnet
4. Lovesight
6. The Kiss
Nuptial Sleep
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Song (“She sat and sang alway”)
Song (“When I am dead, my dearest”)
Remember
After Death
A Pause
Echo
Dead Before Death
An Apple-Gathering
Up-Hill
Goblin Market
Promises Like Pie-Crust
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
The Triumph of Time
I Will Go Back to the Great Sweet Mother
Hymn to Proserpine
A Forsaken Garden
WALTER PATER
from The Renaissance
Preface
from Leonardo da Vinci
Conclusion
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
God’s Grandeur
The Windhover
Pied Beauty
Binsey Poplars
Felix Randal
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
[Carrion Comfort]
No Worst, There Is None
I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day
That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection
Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord
RUDYARD KIPLING
Without Benefit of Clergy
from JUST SO STORIES
How the Leopard Got His Spots
Gunga Din
The Widow at Windsor
Recessional
If—
OSCAR WILDE
Impression du Matin
RESPONSE
Lord Alfred Douglas: Impression de Nuit
The Harlot’s House
Symphony in Yellow
Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Importance of Being Earnest
Aphorisms
from De Profundis
COMPANION READING
H. Montgomery Hyde: from The Trials of Oscar Wilde
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
JOSEPH CONRAD
Preface to The Nigger of the “Narcissus”
Heart of Darkness
“Heart of Darkness” and Its Time
Joseph Conrad: from Congo Diary
Sir Henry Morton Stanley: from Address to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce
RESPONSES
Chinua Achebe: An Image of Africa
Gang of Four: We Live As We Dream, Alone
THOMAS HARDY
Hap
Neutral Tones
Wessex Heights
The Darkling Thrush
On the Departure Platform
The Convergence of the Twain
Channel Firing
In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”
I Looked Up from My Writing
“And There Was a Great Calm”
Epitaph
PERSPECTIVES
The Great War: Confronting the Modern
Blast
Vorticist Manifesto
Rebecca West
Indissoluble Matrimony
Rupert Brooke
The Great Lover
The Soldier
Siegfried Sassoon
Glory of Women
“They”
The Rear-Guard
Everyone Sang
Wilfred Owen
Anthem for Doomed Youth
Strange Meeting
Disabled
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Isaac Rosenberg
Break of Day in the Trenches
Dead Man’s Dump
The Women Poets of World War I
Cicely Hamilton
Non-Combatant
May Wedderburn Cannan
Lamplight
Rouen
Pauline Barrington
“Education”
Helen Dircks
After Bourlon Wood
Alys Fane Trotter
The Hospital Visitor
Teresa Hooley
A War Film
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Who Goes with Fergus?
No Second Troy
The Fascination of What’s Difficult
September 1913
The Wild Swans at Coole
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
Easter 1916
The Second Coming
A Prayer for My Daughter
Sailing to Byzantium
Leda and the Swan
Among School Children
Byzantium
Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
Lapis Lazuli
The Circus Animals’ Desertion
Under Ben Bulben
JAMES JOYCE
Dubliners
Araby
Eveline
Clay
The Dead
T. S. ELIOT
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Gerontion
The Waste Land
RESPONSES
Fadwa Tuqan: In the Aging City
Martin Rowson: from The Waste Land
Journey of the Magi
Four Quartets
Burnt Norton
Tradition and the Individual Talent
VIRGINIA WOOLF
The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection
from A Room of One’s Own
KATHERINE MANSFIELD
The Daughters of the Late Colonel
D. H. LAWRENCE
Piano
Song of a Man Who Has Come Through
Tortoise Shout
Snake
Bavarian Gentians
Cypresses
Odour of Chrysanthemums
DYLAN THOMAS
The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
Fern Hill
Poem in October
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
SAMUEL BECKETT
Endgame
Postwar Poets: English Voices
W. H. AUDEN
Musée des Beaux Arts
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
Spain 1937
Lullaby
September 1, 1939
In Praise of Limestone
PHILIP LARKIN
Church Going
High Windows
Talking in Bed
MCMXIV
TED HUGHES
Wind
Relic
Theology
Dust As We Are
Leaf Mould
Telegraph Wires
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The Courter
PERSPECTIVES
Whose Language?
LOUISE BENNETT
Back to Africa
Colonization in Reverse
Independance
from NG~uG~I WA THIONG’O
Decolonizing the Mind
Native African Languages
NADINE GORDIMER
What Were You Dreaming?
DEREK WALCOTT
A Far Cry from Africa
Wales
The Fortunate Traveller
SEAMUS HEANEY
Punishment
The Skunk
The Toome Road
The Singer’s House
In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge
Postscript
A Call
The Errand
JAMES KELMAN
Home for a Couple of Days
EAVAN BOLAND
Anorexic
Mise Eire
The Pomegranate
A Woman Painted on a Leaf
LORNA GOODISON
The Mulatta as Penelope
On Becoming a Mermaid
Annie Pengelly
AGHA SHAHID ALI
Beyond English
In Arabic
Tonight
PAUL MULDOON
Cuba
Aisling
Meeting the British
Sleeve Notes
NUALA NÍ DHOMhNAILL
Feeding a Child
Parthenogenesis
Labasheedy (The Silken Bed)
As for the Quince
Why I Choose to Write in Irish, The Corpse That Sits Up and Talks Back
GWYNETH LEWIS
Therapy
Mother Tongue
ROBERT CRAWFORD
The Saltcoats Structuralists
Alba Einstein
W. N. HERBERT
Cabaret McGonagall
Smirr
Credits
Index