A History of English Literature

A History of English Literature

by Robert Huntington Fletcher

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Title: A History of English Literature
Author: Robert Huntington Fletcher

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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

PRELIMINARY. HOW TO STUDY AND JUDGE LITERATURE
TWO ASPECTS OF LITERARY STUDY. Such a study of Literature
as that for which the present book is designed includes two purposes,
contributing to a common end. In the first place (I), the student must

gain some general knowledge of the conditions out of which English
literature has come into being, as a whole and during its successive
periods, that is of the external facts of one sort or another without
which it cannot be understood. This means chiefly (1) tracing in a
general way, from period to period, the social