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This anthology — a representative collection of text that comprise the English literature canon — is based upon the one compiled by the venerable Norton publishing house. This page is designed to work in tandem with this site’s Chronology of English literature (which provides a large number of readings rendered as audio files). Together, this anthology and that chronology are designed to accompany the Literary Analysis section of this site (which provides detailed guidance on how to analyse and critique poetry and prose and a comprehensive glossary of all associated terminology etc.).

Seven Eras of English

01. — The Middle Ages
¶ Medieval Estates and Orders: Making and Breaking Rules
¶ King Arthur: Romancing Politics
¶ The First Crusade: Sanctifying War
¶ The Linguistic and Literary Contexts of Beowulf
 
02. — The 16^th century
¶ The Magician, the Heretic, and the Playwright
¶ Renaissance Exploration, Travel, and the World Outside Europe
¶ Dissent, Doubt, and Spiritual Violence in the Reformation
¶ Island Nations
 
03. — The Early 17^th century
¶ Gender, Family, Household: 17^th c. Norms and Controversies
¶ Paradise Lost in Context
¶ Civil Wars of Ideas
¶ Emigrants and Settlers
 
04. — The Restoration and the 18^th century
¶ A Day in Eighteenth-Century London
¶ Slavery and the Slave Trade in Britain
¶ The Plurality of Worlds
¶ Travel, Trade, and the Expansion of Empire
 
05. — The Romantic Period
¶ Tintern Abbey, Tourism, and Romantic Landscape
¶ The Gothic
¶ The French Revolution: Apocalyptic Expectations
¶ Romantic Orientalism
 
06. — The Victorian Age
¶ Industrialism: Progress or Decline?
¶ The Woman Question
¶ The Painterly Image in Poetry
¶ Victorian Imperialism
 
07. — The 20^th century and After
¶ Representing the Great War
¶ Modernist Experiment
¶ Imagining Ireland

Relevant Reads

↘
📙 Oxford University’s Chronology of English Literature
This chronology has two related columns of information, allowing you to review key works of English literature in relation to their time. One lists the significant literary works published in a given year. The other provides a parallel range of information on ruling monarchs; historical events and, the birth and death dates of key authors, thinkers and painters &c.
 
📙 The Persistence of English
This is an informative 2013 essay by Geoffrey Nunberg of Stanford University. It considers how the English language is currently at the moment of its greatest triumph — in the sense of it having around 1.5 billion speakers (approximately a quarter of the world’s population).
 
📙 The Adventure of English
English is understood by around two thousand million people across the world. In this 2006 book, Melvyn Bragg explores the story of the English language — from its beginnings as a minor Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language.
 
📙 English as a Global Language (2^nd ed.)
A factual account of the rise of English as a global language and the whys and wherefores of the history are explored in the 2003 second edition book by David Crystal.
 
📙 The Poetry Handbook (2^nd ed.)
This is the introduction chapter of J. Lenard’s 2006 book as an editable PDF file. As is written, “this book is for anyone who wants to read poetry with a better understanding of its craft and technique.” It also gives guidance on how to analysing poetry.

— § § § —

01. — The Middle Ages

✎ Editable PDF: MANKIND
Mankind is an English medieval morality play, written c. 1470. The play is a moral allegory about Mankind, a representative of the human race, and follows his fall into sin and his repentance. Its author is unknown; the manuscript is signed by a monk named Hyngham, believed to have transcribed the play. Mankind is unique among moralities for its surprising juxtaposition of serious theological matters and colloquial (sometimes obscene) dialogue.

✎ Editable PDF: THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a historical record in English, which takes the form of annals—that is, an annual summary of important events.

✎ Editable PDF: THE BATTLE OF MALDON
The Battle of Maldon celebrates an event of the year 991, when a large party of Scandinavian raiders met the English defense forces on the estuary of the Blackwater River (the Pant of the poem), near Maldon in Essex.

✎ Editable PDF: THE BROME PLAY OF ABRAHAM AND ISAAC
The story of Abraham and Isaac as told in Genesis xxii is a very spare account of an incident that appealed greatly to the medieval imagination, which was always stimulated by a situation in which an ideal is upheld at the expense of all normal human values. This all-or-nothing attitude may also be seen in Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale, where Arveragus delivers his wife to an adulterer in order that she should not be guilty of breaking her word, one’s pledged word being, according to him, the most demanding of human contracts. In the story of Abraham and Isaac, it is obedience to God’s command that a father sacrifice his son that must be carried out.

✎ Editable PDF: WILLIAM CAXTON / Preface to Morte Darthur
William Caxton (c. 1422 – c. 1491) was an English merchant, diplomat, and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England, in 1476, and as a printer was the first English retailer of printed books.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
— The Merchant’s Tale
— The Franklin’s Tale
— The Tale of Sir Thopas
— The Parson’s Tale
The Parliament of Fowls
To Rosamond

Lludd and Lleuelys
The Welsh tale of Lludd and Lleuelys is preserved in a collection of stories contained in two manuscripts, the English titles of which are the White Book of Rhydderch (written c.1300–1325) and the Red Book of Hergest (c.1375–1425). The stories are thought to be much older, some dating back to the latter part of the eleventh century.

MEDIEVAL ATTITUDES TOWARD LIFE ON EARTH
The words with which the Lord God cursed Adam and Eve after their transgression formed, for many articulate men in the Middle Ages, an accurate image of human life: something which was wretched because the Creator had made it so. Such thinkers believed that man had to acknowledge the wretchedness of his life and feel contempt for the world in which he lived in order to attain spiritual salvation.
— Contempt for the World
— Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy
— Triumph Over the World

The Last Journey
A Change in Perspective

— “Beauty That Must Die”

[Ubi Sunt Qui ante Nos Fuerunt]
François Villon: The Ballad of Dead Ladies<

The Goddess Fortune

• Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy
  • Fortune Defends Herself
• Dante: Fortune an Agent of God’s Will

“Life Is Sweet”

• A Vision of Nature in Piers Plowman
• Aucassin and Nicolette

Aucassin Renounces Paradise

From The Land of Cockaigne

— MIDDLE ENGLISH LYRICS

• In Praise of Brunettes
• The Appreciative Drinker
• A Charm Against the Night Goblin
• The Blacksmiths
• Earth Took of Earth
• Spring Has Come with Love
• The Henpecked Husband
• A Bitter Lullaby

— AN OLD ENGLISH RIDDLE

• The Bow

— SIR ORFEO
— PIERS PLOWMAN

• Passus 5: The Confession of Envy
• Passus 5: The Confession of Gluttony

— POPULAR BALLADS
Ballads are anonymous narrative songs that have been preserved by oral transmission. The origins of the popular (or folk) ballad are much disputed. Though the English ballads were probably composed during the five-hundred-year period from 1200 to 1700, few of them were printed before the eighteenth century and some not until the nineteenth
— Edward
— Hind Horn
— Judas
— Robin Hood and the Three Squires

The Middle Ages, AUDIO FILES

“Prologue” from Beowulf (lines 1-98), anonymous, date unknown. — Read by Seamus Heaney.
 

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“The Fight with Grendel” from Beowulf (lines 710-823), anonymous, date unknown. — Read by Seamus Heaney.
 

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“The Last Survivor’s Speech” from Beowulf (lines 2241b-70a), anonymous, date unknown. — Read by Seamus Heaney.
 

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Caedmon’s Hymn, anonymous, date unknown. — Read by J. B. Bessinger.
 

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“Birhtwold’s Speech” from The Battle of Maldon, anonymous, date unknown. — Read by Robert Fulk.
 

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (lines 1-19), anonymous, date unknown. — Read by Marie Borroff.
 

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“The General Prologue” (lines 547-68) from The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, date unknown. — Read by Alfred David.
 

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“The Miller’s Prologue “from The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, date unknown. — Read by V. A. Kolve.
 

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“The Miller’s Tale” (lines 163-98) from The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, date unknown. — Read by Alfred David.
 

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“The Man of Law’s Epilogue” from The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, date unknown. — Read by V. A. Kolve.
 

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“The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” (lines 1-29) from The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, date unknown. — Read by Marie Borroff.
 

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“The Pardoner’s Tale” (lines 428-61) from The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer. — Read by Alfred David.
 

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“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” (lines 337-66) from The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer, date unknown. — Read by Alfred David.
 

Chronology of The Middle Ages

↘
Chronology of The Middle Ages
To read a detailed chronology and a summary of the literature and contexts of this era, visit “The Middle Ages” section of this site’s Chronology of English Literature page.

 

— § § § —

02. — The 16^th century

— ANONYMOUS LYRICS

• Back and Side Go Bare, Go Bare
• In Praise of a Contented Mind
• Though Amaryllis Dance in Green
• Constant Penelope Sends to Thee
• The Queen’s Champion Retires
• The Shepherd’s Consort
• Come Away, Come, Sweet Love!
• Thule, the Period of Cosmography
• Madrigal (“My love in her attire doth show her wit”)
• Weep You No More, Sad Fountains
• The Silver Swan
• An Exhortation Concerning Good Order and Obedience to Rulers and Magistrates
  • The Book of Homilies

— ROGER ASCHAM

• Comeliness

— THOMAS CAMPION

• When Thou Must Home to Shades of Underground
• What If a Day
• Never Love Unless You Can
• Rose-cheeked Laura
• Think’st Thou to Seduce Me Then

— SAMUEL DANIEL

• From Delia
• From Musophilus [Imperial Eloquence]

— SIR JOHN DAVIES

• From Orchestra

— THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROSE STYLE

• Sir John Cheke
  • [Our Own Tongue Clean and Pure]
• The Bible
  • Translations of the Twenty-third Psalm
• Sir Philip Sidney
  • From Arcadia
• Philip Stubbes
  • From The Anatomy of Abuses
• William Bullein
  • From A Dialogue Against the Pestilence [Travelers’ Tales]

— MICHAEL DRAYTON

• Idea

— SIR EDWARD DYER

• My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is

— RICHARD EDWARDS

• Amantium Irae Amoris Redintegratio Est

— JOHN FOXE

• From Acts and Monuments

— HUGH LATIMER

• Sermon of the Plowers

— GEORGE GASCOIGNE

• Gascoigne’s Lullaby
• Woodmanship
• Farewell with a Mischief
• The Lullaby of a Lover

— FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE

• From Mustapha [Chorus Sacerdotum]

— ARTHUR GOLDING

• from Ovid’s Metamorphoses
  • The Four Ages

— HAKLUYT’S VOYAGES

• From A Brief and True Report
• An Extract of Master Ralph Lane’s Letter

— MARY (SIDNEY) HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE

• To the Angel Spirit of Sir Philip Sidney
• Psalm 58 Si Vere Utique

— SIR THOMAS HOBY

• The Courtier

— RICHARD HOOKER

• Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
  • From The Preface [On Moderation in Controversy]
  • From Book 1, Chapter 8 [On the Scope of the Several Laws]
  • From Book 1, Chapter 10 [The Foundations of Society]
  • From Book 1, Chapter 12 [The Need for Revealed Law]
  • From Book 1, Chapter 16 [Conclusion]

— HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY

• The Fourth Book of Virgil
  • [The Hunt]
• The Second Book of Virgil
  • [Hector Warns Aeneas to Flee Troy]
• Set Whereas the Sun Doth Parch the Green
• Give Place, Ye Lovers, Here Before

— JOHN LYLY

• Cupid and My Campaspe

— “MARTIN MARPRELATE”

• Hay Any Work for Cooper

— THOMAS NASHE

 

• Spring, the Sweet Spring
• Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil
  • An Invective Against Enemies of Poetry
  • [The Defense of Plays]
• From The Unfortunate Traveler, or The Life of Jack Wilton
  • [Roman Summer]

— GEORGE PEELE

• Fair and Fair

— SIR WALTER RALEGH

• A Report of the Truth of the Fight About the Isles of Azores This Last Summer Betwixt the Revenge, One of Her Majesty’s Ships, and an Armada of the King of Spain
• Walsinghame

— WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

• SONGS FROM THE PLAYS
  • When Daisies Pied
• Spring
• Winter
• The Woosel Cock So Black of Hue
• Tell Me Where Is Fancy Bred
• Sigh No More, Ladies
• Under the Greenwood Tree
• Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind
• It Was a Lover and His Lass
• Oh Mistress Mine
• Take, Oh, Take Those Lips Away
• Hark, Hark! the Lark
• Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun
• When Daffodils Begin to Peer
• Full Fathom Five
• Where the Bee Sucks, There Suck I
• SONNETS

• 56 (“Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said”)
• 104 (“To me, fair friend, you never can be old”)
• 118 (“Like as, to make our appetites more keen”)
• 121 (“‘Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed”)
• 124 (“If my dear love were but the child of state”)
• 128 (“How oft when thou, my music, music play’st”)
• The Phoenix and the Turtle
• King Henry the Fourth, Part I

— SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

• • Astrophil and Stella
    • 7 (“When Nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes”)
    • 39 (“Come Sleep! O sleep the certain knot of peace”)
    • 61 (“Off with true sights, oft with uncallèd tears”)

—

• The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia
• The Absent Urania
• Kalander Tells About Basilus
• The Country of Arcadia

— JOHN SKELTON

• Upon a Dead Man’s Head
• To Mistress Margaret Hussey
• Colin Clout
  • [The Spirituality vs. the Temporality]

— EDMUND SPENSER

• From Amoretti
• Sonnet 15 (“Ye tradefull merchants, that with weary toyle”)
• Sonnet 35 (“My hungry eyes through greedy covetize”)
• Sonnet 59 (“Thrise happie she, that is so well assured”)
• Sonnet 70 (“Fresh spring the herald of loves mighty king”)
• THE FAERIE QUEENE

• Book II. The Cave of Mammon
• Book III. Contayning the Legend of Britomartis, or of Chastitie
• Book VII. Mutabilitie Cantos
  • Canto VI
  • Canto VII
  • The VIII Canto, unperfite
• An Hymne in Honour of Beautie

— CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE

• Tichborne’s Elegy

— ISABELLA WHITNEY

• Will and Testament

— SIR THOMAS WYATT (the Elder)

• Like to the Unmeasurable Mountains
• Lux, My Fair Falcon
• Tangled I Was in Love’s Snare
• In Spain
• And wilt thou leave me thus?

— § § § —

03. — The Early 17^th century

• The Varieties of Wit
• The Unicorn: End of a Legend

— ANONYMOUS

• The Power of Money
• Tom a Bedlam

— JOHN AUBREY

• The Life of Thomas Hobbes

— SIR ROBERT AYTOUN

• To an Inconstant One

— FRANCIS BEAUMONT AND JOHN FLETCHER

• Songs from The Faithful Shepherdess
• Songs from Valentinian
• Songs from The Masque of the Inner Temple
  and Gray’s Inn

— WILLIAM BROWNE

• On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke

— ROBERT BURTON

• The Anatomy of Melancholy

— THOMAS CAREW

• Song
• The Second Rapture
• Disdain Returned
• Song (Persuasions to Enjoy)

— ELIZABETH CARY

• The Tragedy of Mariam, The Fair Queen of Jewry

— JOHN CLEVELAND

• Mark Antony

— ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, FIRST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY

• A Character of Henry Hastings

— ABIEZER COPPE

• A Fiery Flying Roll

— RICHARD CORBET

• A Proper New Ballad: The Fairies’ Farewell, or God-A-Mercy Will

— ABRAHAM COWLEY

• The Wish
• To Mr. Hobbes
• To the Royal Society

— RICHARD CRASHAW

• Luke 7
• On Our Crucified Lord, Naked and Bloody

— SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT

• A Song

— JOHN DONNE

• Devotions upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation XI
• Twicknam Garden
• To the Countess of Bedford
• The Curse
• Lovers’ Infiniteness
• The Storm
• Elegy I. Jealousy
• Elegy IV. The Perfume
• Paradoxes and Problems
• Sermon LXV: On the Weight of Eternal Glory
• Sermon LXXVI: On Falling Out of God’S Hand
• A Nocturnal upon Saint Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day
• The Blossom
• A Lecture upon the Shadow
• Holy Sonnet 17 (“Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt”)

EDWARD, LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY

• Sonnet of Black Beauty

— JOSEPH HALL

• Sir Thomas Overbury and John Earle

— ROBERT HAYMAN

• Of the Great and Famous

— GEORGE HERBERT

• Temptation
• Anagram
• Hope
• Sin’s Round
• Love Unknown
• Aaron
• The Altar
• Redemption
• Easter Wings
• Jordan (1)
• The Collar
• The Pulley
• The Flower
• Love (3)

— ROBERT HERRICK

• An Ode for Him
• Discontents in Devon
• Upon a Child That Died
• Oberon’s Feast
• The Pillar of Fame
• His Grange, or Private Wealth
• Upon His Spaniel Tracy
• To Lar
• The Lily in a Crystal
• To Blossoms
• To the Water Nymphs Drinking at the Fountain

— LUCY HUTCHINSON

• Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson

— EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON

• The History of the Rebellion

— BEN JONSON

• • • It Was a Beauty That I Saw
    • An Elegy
    • Gypsy Songs
    • The Vision of Delight
    • An Ode
    • To William Camden
    • On Don Surly
    • In the Person of Womankind
    • Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount
    • Epitaph on Elizabeth, L. H.
    • A Celebration of Charis in Ten Lyric Pieces
    • Though I Am Young
    • Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue

— HENRY KING

• • • The Exequy

— JOHN LILBURNE

• • • The Picture of the Council of State

— RICHARD LOVELACE

• • • The Snail

— ANDREW MARVELL

• • • Mourning
    • On Paradise Lost

— JOHN MILTON

• • • At a Solemn Music
    • When the Assault Was Intended to the City
    • A Book Was Writ of Late Called Tetrachordon
    • Lawrence, of Virtuous Father Virtuous Son
    • Of Education
    • Comus
    • To My Friend, Mr. Henry Lawes, on His Airs
    • Paradise Lost: The Arguments
    • Samson Agonistes

— DOROTHY OSBORNE

• • • The Letters of Dorothy Osborne
    • [“Servants”]
    • [Fighting with Brother John]

— CHARLES SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET

• • • Song

— SIR CHARLES SEDLEY

• • • Song

— JAMES SHIRLEY

• • • Dirge

JOHN SKELTON

• • • Upon a Dead Man’s Head
    • To Mistress Margaret Hussey
    • Colin Clout

— RACHEL SPEGHT

• • • A Dream

— THOMAS SPRAT

• • • The History of the Royal Society

— JAMES STEWART, KING JAMES I

• • • The True Law of Free Monarchies

SIR JOHN SUCKLING

• • • A Song to a Lute

— JEREMY TAYLOR

• • • Gems of Pulpit Rhetoric

— ANNA TRAPNEL

• • • Report and Plea

— EDMUND WALLER

• • • Of the Last Verses in the Book
    • On a Girdle
    • Of English Verse

— IZAAK WALTON

• • • The Life of Dr. John Donne

— GERRARD WINSTANLEY

• • • The True Leveler’s Standard Advanced

— HENRY VAUGHAN

• • • The Book
    • Peace
    • Man
    • A Rhapsody
    • I Walked the Other Day (To Spend My Hour)

— SIR HENRY WOTTON

• • • On His Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia

— § § § —

04. — The Restoration and the 18^th century

— JOSEPH ADDISON and SIR RICHARD STEELE

• Addison: [Party Patches]
• Addison: [The Trial of the Petticoat]
• Steele: [The Gentleman; The Pretty Fellow]
• Steele: [Dueling]
• Addison: [Sir Roger at Church]

–JOHN BUNYAN

• From Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

— WILLIAM COLLINS

• Ode Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746
• Ode on the Death of Mr. Thomson

— WILLIAM CONGREVE

• Love for Love

— GEORGE CRABBE

• from The Borough

— A GRACE BEYOND THE REACH OF ART

• LONGINUS: [Genius and the Rules]
• QUINTILIAN: [When to Break the Rules]
• RENÉ RAPIN: [Grace Beyond the Rules]
• SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE: [The Inadequacy of the Rules]
• JOHN HUGHES: [“Curiosa Felicitas”]
• ROGER DE PILES: [Grace Gains the Heart]
• LEONARD WELSTED: [No Precepts Can Teach Grace]

— THE GENERAL AND THE PARTICULAR

• ARISTOTLE: [Poetry and History Contrasted]
• HORACE: [Character Types in Comedy]
• SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT: [Poetry and History Contrasted]
• ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, THIRD EARL OF SHAFTESBURY:
  [The General and the Particular in Painting]
• SAMUEL JOHNSON: [The Particular in Biography]
• SAMUEL JOHNSON: [The Simplicity of Grandeur]
• SAMUEL JOHNSON: [Hudibras and the Particular]
• SAMUEL JOHNSON: [The Grandeur of Generality]
• JOSEPH WARTON: [On Thomson’s Seasons]
• HUGH BLAIR: [The Particular in Descriptive Poetry]
• SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS: [The General and the
  Particular in Painting — The “Grand Style”]
• WILLIAM BLAKE: [The Aesthetic Value of the General Denied]

— GENIUS

• Samuel Johnson: [Definitions of Genius]
• John Dryden: [Genius Is above Correctness]
• Joseph Addison: [The Beauties of Great
  Geniuses Independent of Rules]
• Samuel Johnson: [Genius Requires Invention]
• Edward Young: [Imitation and Genius]
• Samuel Johnson: [Genius and Knowledge]
• Alexander Gerard: [The Origins of Genius]
• John Moir: [The Unique Vision of Original Genius]
• Sir Joshua Reynolds: [Genius the Child of Imitation]
• William Blake: [Genius Unbound]
• William Hazlitt: [Reynolds’ Genius]

— DANIEL DEFOE

• from The History and Remarkable Life
  of the Truly Honorable Col. Jacque
• A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal

— JOHN DRYDEN

• Epilogue to The Conquest of Granada, II
• Prologue to The Tempest
• Epilogue to Tyrannic Love
• Song from The Indian Emperor
• Song from An Evening’s Love
• To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew
• The Secular Masque
• from The Preface to Fables Ancient and Modern
  • In Praise of Chaucer

— ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA

• On Myself

— JOHN GAY

• The Birth of the Squire. An Eclogue
• Recitativo and Air from Acis and Galatea

— OLIVER GOLDSMITH

• from Letters from a Citizen of the World

— THOMAS GRAY

• Hymn to Adversity

SAMUEL JOHNSON

• from Prayers and Meditations
• Rambler No. 203
• Idler No. 58
• Prologue Spoken by Mr. Garrick
• Translation of Horace, Odes, Book 4.7
• from Lives of the Poets
  • Milton
    • LYCIDAS
    • L’ALLEGRO, IL PENSEROSO
    • PARADISE LOST
  • Cowley
• Metaphysical Wit

 

• Pope

 

 

• Pope’s Intellectual Character. Pope and Dryden Compared
• The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

 

ALEXANDER POPE

• Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
• The First Satire of the Second Book
  of Horace Imitated
• The Universal Prayer
• Epistle to Miss Blount
• from The Dunciad
  • The Carnation and the Butterfly
• Ode on Solitude

MATTHEW PRIOR

• A True Maid
• A Better Answer

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

• The School for Scandal

CHRISTOPHER SMART

• A Song to David

SIR RICHARD STEELE

• See Addision, Joseph

LAURENCE STERNE

• Reply to Sancho
• from Tristram Shandy

JONATHAN SWIFT

• Abolishing of Christianity in England…
• from A Tale of a Tub
• Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift

JAMES THOMSON

• An Ode on Aeolus’s Harp
• from The Seasons
  • Summer
    • DAWN
    • SWIMMING
    • EVENING
  • Winter
• A SNOWSTORM

— § § § —

05. — The Romantic Period

— THE ART OF ROMANTIC POETRY

• William Blake
• William Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Spontaneous and Controlled Composition
• Lord Byron
• Edward J. Trelawny: Shelley on Composing
• Thomas Medwin: Shelley’s Self-Hypercriticism
• Richard Woodhouse: Keats on Composing

— THE SATANIC AND BYRONIC HERO

• John Milton: Satan
• Romantic Comments on Milton’s Satan
  • William Blake
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• The Evolution of the Byronic Hero
  

• Ann Radcliffe: The Italian Villain
• Lord Byron: from Lara
• Lord Byron: from Manfred: A Dramatic Poem

— ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD

• Life

— THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES

• Song (“How many times do I love thee, dear?”)
• Song (“Old Adam, the carrion crow”)
• The Phantom Wooer

— WILLIAM BLAKE

• from Poetical Sketches
  • To Spring
  • To the Evening Star
• All Religions Are One
• There Is No Natural Religion
• from Songs of Experience
• A Song of Liberty
• Song (“How sweet I roam’d from field to field”)
• Song (“Memory, hither come”)
• Mad Song
• To the Muses
• The Mental Traveller
• from Blake’s Notebook

• Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau
• Never pain to tell thy love
• I askèd a thief
• And Did Those Feet
• Letters on Sight and Vision
• To Thomas Butts (Nov. 22, 1802)
• To William Hayley (Oct. 23, 1804)
• from A Vision of the Last Judgment

— WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES

• To the River Itchin, near Winton
• Languid, and sad, and slow

— ROBERT BURNS

• Corn Rigs an’ Barley Rigs
• Willie Brewed a Peck o’ Maut
• Ae fond kiss
• Ye flowery banks

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

• Phantom
• Recollections of Love
• Constancy to an Ideal Object
• On Donne’s Poetry
• Work without Hope
• Epitaph
• Biographia Literaria
  • Chapter 1
    • [The discipline of his taste at school]
    • [Bowles’s Sonnets]
    • [Comparison b/w the poets before and since Mr. Pope]
• from Religious Musings
• What Is Life?
• Limbo
• Phantom or Fact
• Sonnet to the River Otter
• On Donne’s Poetry
• Work Without Hope
• Recollections of Love
• Constancy to an Ideal Object
• Epitaph
• from Biographia Literaria
• Dejection: An Ode

GEORGE DARLEY

• Over Hills and Uplands High
• The Phoenix
• It is not Beauty I demand
• The Mermaidens’ Vesper Hymn

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

• The English Mail Coach
  • from The Vision of Sudden Death
• On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

• The Vision of Judgment
• Don Juan
  • Canto 3
    • [Juan & Haidee]

WILLIAM HAZLITT

• from On Shakespeare and Milton
• from The Fight
• On Going a Journey
• from Mr. Wordsworth

JOHN KEATS

• from Endymion
• from Book IV

• O Sorrow
• In Drear-Nighted December
• On the Sonnet

LEIGH HUNT

• The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit

CHARLES LAMB

• A Letter to Wordsworth
• New Year’s Eve
• from On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century
• Witches, and Other Night Fears
• The Two Races of Men

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

• On Seeing a Hair of Lucretia Borgia
• On his Seventy-fifth Birthday
• Rose Aylmer
• Past ruined Ilion
• Twenty years hence
• The Three Roses
• Dirce
• Well I remember how you smiled

— THOMAS MOORE

• Believe me, if all those endearing young charms
• The harp that once through Tara’s halls
• The time I’ve lost in wooing

— THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK

• The Four Ages of Poetry
• The War Song of Dinas Vawr

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY

• from The Present State of Europe Compared
  with Antient Prophecies

— PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

• Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitude
• Stanzas Written in Dejection — December 1818, near Naples
• To — [Music, When Soft Voices Die]
• O World, O Life, O Time
• Choruses from Hellas
  • Worlds on Worlds
  • The World’s Great Age
• A Dirge
• Song of Apollo
• To Jane. The Invitation
• The Triumph of Life

— ROBERT SOUTHEY

• from Joan of Arc: An Epic Poem
• My Days Among the Dead Are Passed

— SIR WALTER SCOTT

• Coronach
• from The Heart of Midlothian
• Lochinvar
• Jock of Hazeldean
• The Two Drovers
• The Dreary Change
• Lucy Ashton’s Song

— ELHANAN WINCHESTER

• from The Three Woe-Trumpets

— WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

• Ode to Duty
• The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind
  • Book Seventh. Residence in London
  • Book Ninth. Residence in France
• from Descriptive Sketches
• from The Excursion: Book 3, Despondency
• A Poet! — He Hath Put His Heart to School
• To My Sister
• The Green Linnet
• Composed in the Valley near Dover, On the Day of Landing
• Composed by the Side of Grasmere Lake
• Afterthought
• Yew Trees
• The Two April Mornings
• She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

— § § § —

06. — The Victorian Age

— MATTHEW ARNOLD

• from On the Study of Celtic Literature: The Function of a Professor
• Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann
• Longing
• Requiescat
• Palladium
• The Better Part
• Shakespeare
• In Harmony with Nature
• Philomela
• The Forsaken Merman
• Thyrsis
• To a Friend
• Isolation. To Marguerite
• To Marguerite — Continued
• Memorial Verses
• Growing Old
• from Maurice de Guérin: A Definition of Poetry
• from Wordsworth
• from The Function of Criticism at the Present Time

— THOMAS CARLYLE

• Carlyle’s Portraits of His Contemporaries
• Daniel Webster at 57
• Ralph Waldo Emerson at 30
• Emerson at 44
• Bronson Alcott at 42
• Queen Victoria at Eighteen
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge at Fifty-Three
• William Wordsworth In His Seventies
• Alfred Tennyson at Thirty-Four
• Charles Lamb at 56
• William Makepeace Thackeray at 42
• King William IV at 69
• from Characteristics
• from Sartor Resartus: Natural Supernaturalism
• from The French Revolution: September in Paris
• from Cause and Effect

— JOHN STUART MILL

• from Coleridge

— JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN

• Doubt and Faith
• from Apologia Pro Vita Sua
  • from Chapter 1. History of My Religious Opinions to the Year 1833
  • from Chapter 3. History of My Religious Opinions from 1839 to 1841
  • from Chapter 5. Position of My Mind Since 1845
• from Liberalis

— ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

• To George Sand: A Desire
• To George Sand: A Recognition
• A Year’s Spinning
• A Musical Instrument

— ROBERT BROWNING

• Up at a Villa – down in the City
• In a Year
• Respectability
• Confessions
• The Householder
• The Laboratory
• Home-Thoughts, from Abroad
• Home-Thoughts, from the Sea
• Meeting at Night
• Parting at Morning
• Memorabilia
• The Last Ride Together
• Two in the Campagna
• Prospice
• Women and Roses
• A Toccata of Galuppi’s
• A Woman’s Last Word
• Youth and Art
• Dîs Aliter Visum; or, Le Byron de Nos Jours
• Apparent Failure
• House
• To Edward FitzGerald
• Abt Vogler
• Epilogue to Asolando

— LEWIS CARROLL

• Anagrammatic Sonnet
• The Walrus and the Carpenter
• from The Hunting of the Snark: The Baker’s Tale

— ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH

• Epi-strauss-ium
• The Latest Decalogue
• Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth
• from Dipsychus: I Dreamt a Dream

— CHARLES DICKENS

• from Martin Chuzzlewit: Mrs. Gamp and Mr. Mould
• from David Copperfield:
  • The Journey to Salem House School
  • The Journey from London to Dover
• from Bleak House: In Chancery
• from Hard Times:
  • The One Thing Needful
  • Murdering the Innocents
  • Coketown
• from Our Mutual Friend: Podsnappery

— GEORGE ELIOT

• The Mill on the Floss
  • From Book First. Boy and Girl
• Chapters 1–5

— WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

• In Hospital:
  Waiting
• Madam Life’s a Piece in Bloom
• Barmaid

— W. S. GILBERT

• When Britain Really Ruled the Waves

— THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

• from A Liberal Education: A Game of Chess
• from An Address on University Education: [The Function of a Professor

— INDUSTRIALISM: PROGRESS OR DECLINE?

• Charles Dickens: from Dombey and Son
  • Railway-Construction in a London Suburb
  • A Journey by Railway
• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: from The Communist Manifesto
  • Bourgeois and Proletarians
• Herbert Spencer: from Social Statics
  • Progress Through Individual Enterprise

— GEORGE MEREDITH

• Lucifer in Starlight
• Modern Love
  • 3 (“This was the woman; what now of the man?”)
  • 15 (“I think she sleeps; it must be sleep, when lo”w)
  • 16 (“In our old shipwrecked days there was an hour”)
  • 23 (“‘Tis Christmas weather, and a country house”)
  • 35 (“It is no vulgar nature I have wived”)
  • 42 (“I am to follow her. There is much grace”)
  • 43 (“Mark where the pressing wind shoots javelinlik”e)
  • 48 (“Their sense is with their senses all mixed in”)
• Dirge in Woods

— WILLIAM MORRIS

• I Know a Little Garden-Close
• Christ Keep the Hollow Land
• For the Bed at Kelmscott
• The Haystack in the Floods
• from The Earthly Paradise: An Apology
• A Death Song

— WALTER PATER

• from Appreciations: From Style
• from The Child in the House

— COVENTRY PATMORE

• from The Angel in the House
  • The Spirit’s Epochs
  • The Kiss
• from The Unknown Eros
  • Magna Est Veritas
  • A Farewell

— DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

• The House of Life
  • 4. Lovesight
  • 49. Willowwood — 1
  • 50. Willowwood — 2
  • 51. Willowwood — 3
  • 52. Willowwood — 4
  • 63. Inclusiveness
  • 71. The Choice — I
  • 71. The Choice — II
  • 73. The Choice — III
  • 97. A Superscription
  • 101. The One Hope
• She Bound Her Green Sleeve
• The Woodspurge
• The Sea-Limits
• The Orchard-Pit

— CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

• Winter: My Secret

— JOHN RUSKIN

• The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century
• from Lectures on Art: imperial duty

— ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

• In Memory of Walter Savage Landor
• An Interlude
• In the Orchard (Provençal Burden)
• Choruses from Atalanta in Calydon
  • When the Hounds of Spring
  • Before the Beginning of Years
  • The Garden of Proserpine
• from The Triumph of Time: I Will Go Back to the Great Sweet Mother
• The Lake of Gaube

— ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

• Rizpah
• In Love, If Love Be Love
• To E. FitzGerald
• Locksley Hall Sixty Years After
• By an Evolutionist
• June Bracken and Heather
• from Idylls of the King
• Dedication
• A Dedication
• I Stood on a Tower
• The Silent Voices
• St. Agnes’ Eve
• You Ask Me, Why, Though Ill at Ease
• Lines
• Sonnet (“How thought you that this thing could captivate”)
• Move Eastward, Happy Earth
• The Revenge
• The Eagle: A Fragment
• from The Princess
• Sweet and Low
• The Splendor Falls
• Ask Me No More
• Come Down, O Maid
• Flower in the Crannied Wall
• Sonnet (“She took the dappled partridge flecked with blood”)
• from Maud
• Part 1

• 6.5 (“Ah, what shall I be at fifty”)
• 6.8 (“Perhaps the smile and tender ton”e)
• 6.10 (“”I have played with her when a child)
• 8 (“She came to the village church”)
• 11 (“O let the solid ground”)
• 12 (“Birds in the high Hall-garden”)
• 16.3 (“Catch not my breath, O clamorous heart”)
• 18 (“I have led her home, my love, my only friend”)
• Part 2

• 4 (“O that ’twere possible”)
• In the Valley of Cauteretz
• from Idylls of the King

• Pelleas and Ettarre
• The Passing of Arthur
• Northern Farmer
• To Virgil
• “Frater Ave atque Vale”
• The Dawn
• Crossing the Bar

— FRANCIS THOMPSON

• The Kingdom of God
• The Hound of Heaven

— OSCAR WILDE

• Sonnet: On the Sale by Auction of Keats’ Love Letters
• Symphony in Yellow
• Hélas
• E Tenebris

— § § § —

07. — The 20^th century and After

— ANONYMOUS

• Easter 1916 Proclamation of an Irish Republic

— RUPERT BROOKE

• Heaven

— JOSEPH CONRAD

• Youth
• The Brute

— ERNEST DOWSON

• To One in Bedlam
• A Last Word
• Spleen
• Flos Lunae
• Dregs
• Exchanges
• Carthusians

— GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

• The Lantern out of Doors
• Inversnaid

— LIONEL JOHNSON

• The Precept of Silence
• Mystic and Cavalier
• The Dark Angel

— RUDYARD KIPLING

• Harp Song of the Dane Women

— JAMES MORRIS

• The Partition of India

— RICHARD MULCAHY

• On the Treaty Between Great Britain and Ireland

— JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

• Tryst with Destiny

— EDWARD THOMAS

• The Path
• The Gallows
• Ambition
• A Private

27636_20th_U09_Thomas-1-3

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End Notes

* n.b. This page relies heavily on the scholarly work of:
Greenblatt, S &, Abrams, M. H. (Eds.). 2006. The Norton Anthology of English Literature (8th ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

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ENGLISH LIT.

English style guide
The English language
Booker / “Nobel” / Pulitzer
Elizabethan era / “Love letters”
“Definitive List of Literary Works”
French in English / Latin in English
Anthology / Chronology / Terminology
Phrases & idioms with their etymologies
Literary criticism: analysing poetry & prose
Glossary of works, writers and literary devices:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
📙 Books       📕 Poets       📗 Thinkers       📘 Writers

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READING LISTS ETC.

WRITERS Atwood, Margaret Austen, Jane Brontë sisters Burton, Sir Richard Chaucer, Geoffrey Conrad, Joseph Curtis, Adam de Cervantes, Miguel Dickens, Charles Dostoevsky, Fyodor Faulkner, William Forster, E. M. García Márquez Greene, Graham Hardy, Thomas Hemingway, Earnest Huxley, Aldous Joyce, James Kafka, Franz Kureishi, Hanif Lawrence, D. H. Melville, Herman Miller, Henry Morrison, Toni Nin, Anaïs Orwell, George Proust, Marcel Roy, Anuradha Rushdie, Salman Şafak, Elif Seneca Smith, Zadie Steinbeck, John Tolstoy, Leo Updike, John Waugh, Evelyn Wilde, Oscar Woolf, Virginia Zola, Émile

POETS Aesop Alighieri, Dante Angelou, Maya Blake, William Byron, Lord Catullus, Gaius Coleridge, Samuel T. Cummings, E. E. Dickinson, Emily Donne, John Dryden, John Eliot, T. S. Frost, Robert Gibran, Kahlil Heaney, Seamus Homer Horace Kaur, Rupi Keats, John Larkin, Philip Marlowe, Christopher Milton, John Ovid Plath, Sylvia Poe, Edgar Allen Pound, Ezra Raleigh, Walter Rumi Sappho Sexton, Anne Shakespeare, William Shelley, Percy Silverstein, Shel Spenser, Edmund Tennyson, Alfred Virgil Walcott, Derek Whitman, Walt Wyatt, Thomas

PHILOSOPHERS Antisthenes Aquinas, Thomas Aristotle Bacon, Francis Bentham, Jeremy Cicero Confucius de Beauvoir, Simone Democritus Derrida, Jacques Descartes, René Empedocles Epicurus Foucault, Michel Hegel, Georg Heraclitus Hobbes, Thomas Hume, David John Stuart Mill Kant, Immanuel Kierkegaard, Søren Lao-Tzu Locke, John Machiavelli, Niccolo Marcus Aurelius Marx, Karl Nietzsche, Friedrich Paine, Tom Parmenides Plato Plotinus Pope Gregory I Popper, Karl Pythagoras Rousseau, Jean Russell, Bertrand Sartre, Jean-Paul Socrates Spinoza, Baruch St Augustine Thales Voltaire Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wollstonecraft, Mary Zeno of Citium

PSYCHOLOGISTS Bandura, Albert Ekman, Paul Erikson, Erik Festinger, Leon Freud, Sigmund Horney, Karen James, William Johnson, Virginia Jung, Carl Kahneman, Daniel Kinsey, Alfred Klein, Melanie Pavlov, Ivan Piaget, Jean Pinker, Steven Rogers, Carl Skinner, B. F. Vygotsky, Lev POLITICAL FIGURES ⅰ Queen Boudica ⅱ King Alfred the Great ⅲ King Edward I ⅳ King Henry V ⅴ King Henry VIII ⅵ Queen Elizabeth I ⅶ King Charles II ⅷ Queen Victoria Berners-Lee, Tim Chomsky, Noam Columbus, Christopher Copernicus, Nicolaus da Vinci, Leonardo Darwin, Charles Dawkins, Richard Einstein, Albert Fukuyama, Francis Galilei, Galileo Gutenberg, Johannes Harari, Yuval Hobsbawm, Eric Lovelace, Ada Michelangelo Newton, Isaac Saïd, Edward

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BOOKS OF FICTION ⅋ 📙 120 Days of Sodom 📙 Aeneid 📙 Agamemnon 📙 The Arabian Nights 📙 The Art of Love 📙 Astrophil and Stella 📙 The Bell Jar 📙 Brave New World 📙 The Carnal Prayer Mat 📙 Catch-22 📙 An Opium-Eater 📙 Delta of Venus 📙 The Divine Comedy 📙 Dubliners 📙 Fanny Hill 📙 Flowers of Evil 📙 Gilgamesh 📙 Heart of Darkness 📙 Iliad 📙 The Kama Sutra 📙 King James Bible 📙 Lady and the Dog 📙 Lady Chatterley’s Lover 📙 Lolita 📙 Lord of the Files 📙 Madame Bovary 📙 Metamorphoses 📙 Metamorphosis 📙 Milk and Honey 📙 1984 📙 Odyssey 📙 The Old Man and the Sea 📙 The Oresteia 📙 The Perfumed Garden 📙 The Secret Sharer 📙 Snows of Kilimanjaro 📙 Song of Solomon 📙 Story of O 📙 Story of the Eye 📙 The Trial 📙 Theogony 📙 Tropic of Cancer 📙 Ulysses 📙 Willian Wilson 📙 Yellow Wallpaper NON-FICTION BOOKS ⅋ 📙 The Adventure of English 📙 Amusing Ourselves to Death 📙 An Apology for Poetry 📙 De Profundis 📙 A Defence of Poetry 📙 Dream of Enlightenment 📙 Dream of Reason 📙 English as a Global Language 📙 The Four Ages of Poetry 📙 Future Shock 📙 The Golden Bough 📙 Guns, Germs, and Steel 📙 Hammer of Witches 📙 Handbook of Philosophy 📙 History of Philosophy 📙 Illustrated Philosophy 📙 Imagined Communities 📙 The Magic of Reality 📙 Manufacturing Consent 📙 Norton Anthology of English 📙 On Bullshit 📙 Orientalism 📙 Oxford Book of English Verse 📙 Public Opinion 📙 Pursuits of Wisdom 📙 Sapiens 📙 Why We Sleep

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The Prophet “If you love somebody, let them go, if they don’t return, they were never yours.”	The Essential Rumi “Lovers do not finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along.”
Ways of Escape: a journey of sorts A short excerpt from the book: “I was dead, deader than dead because, I was still alive.”	The Significance of Literature A podcast series that chronologically charts the key works of poetry and prose.