# The Cambridge History of English Literature

Preface

#### Volume I. From the Beginnings to the Cycles of Romance.

* The Beginnings
* Runes and Manuscripts
* Early National Poetry
* Old English Christian Poetry
* Latin Writings in England to the Time of Alfred
* Alfred and the Old English Prose of his Reign
* From Alfred to the Conquest
* The Norman Conquest
* Latin Chroniclers from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries
* English Scholars of Paris and Franciscans of Oxford
* Early Transition English
* The Arthurian Legend
* Metrical Romances, 1200–1500: I
* Metrical Romances, 1200–1500: II
* “Pearl,” “Cleanness,” “Patience” and “Sir Gawayne”
* Later Transition English: Legendaries and Chroniclers
* Later Transition English: Secular Lyrics; Tales; Social Satire
* The Prosody of Old and Middle English
* Changes in the Language to the Days of Chaucer
* The Anglo-French Law Language

#### II. The End of the Middle Ages.

* “Piers the Plowman” and its Sequence
* Religious Movements in the Fourteenth Century
* The Beginnings of English Prose
* The Scottish Language: Early and Middle Scots
* The Earliest Scottish Literature
* John Gower
* Chaucer
* The English Chaucerians
* Stephen Hawes
* The Scottish Chaucerians
* The Middle Scots Anthologies: Anonymous Verse and Early Prose
* English Prose in the Fifteenth Century, I: Pecock, Fortescue, The Paston Letters
* The Introduction of Printing into England and the Early Work of the Press
* English Prose in the Fifteenth Century, II: Caxton, Malory, Berners
* English and Scottish Education. Universities and Public Schools to the Time of Colet
* Transition English Song Collections
* Ballads
* Political and Religious Verse to the Close of the Fifteenth Century—Final Words

#### III. Renaissance and Reformation.

* Englishmen and the Classical Renaissance
* Reformation Literature in England
* The Dissolution of the Religious Houses
* Barclay and Skelton: Early German Influences on English Literature
* The Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
* Sir David Lyndsay (and the Later Scottish “Makaris”)
* Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
* The New English Poetry
* “A Mirror for Magistrates”
* George Gascoigne
* The Poetry of Spenser
* The Elizabethan Sonnet
* Prosody from Chaucer to Spenser
* Elizabethan Criticism
* Chroniclers and Antiquaries
* Elizabethan Prose Fiction
* The Marprelate Controversy
* “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity”
* English Universities, Schools and Scholarship in the Sixteenth Century
* The Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare

#### IV. Prose and Poetry from Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.

* Translators
* The “Authorised Version” and its Influence
* Sir Walter Ralegh
* The Literature of the Sea: From the Origins to Hakluyt
* Seafaring and Travel: The Growth of Professional Text-Books and Geographical Literature
* The Song-Books and Miscellanies
* Robert Southwell. Samuel Daniel
* Thomas Campion
* The Successors of Spenser
* Michael Drayton
* John Donne
* The English Pulpit from Fisher to Donne
* Robert Burton, John Barclay and John Owen
* The Beginnings of English Philosophy
* Early Writings on Politics and Economics
* London and the Development of Popular Literature: Character Writing, Satire, The Essay
* Writers on Country Pursuits and Pastimes
* The Book-Trade, 1557–1625
* The Foundation of Libraries

#### V. The Drama to 1642. Part I.

* Introductory: The Origins of English Drama
* Secular Influences on the Early English Drama: Minstrels, Village Festivals, Folk-Plays
* The Early Religious Drama: Miracle-Plays and Moralities
* Early English Tragedy
* Early English Comedy
* The Plays of the University Wits
* Marlowe and Kyd
* Shakespeare: Life and Plays
* Shakespeare: Poems
* Plays of Uncertain Authorship Attributed to Shakespeare
* The Text of Shakespeare
* Shakespeare on the Continent, 1660–1700
* Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
* Some Political and Social Aspects of the Later Elizabethan and Earlier Stewart Period

#### VI. The Drama to 1642. Part II.

* Ben Jonson
* Chapman, Marston, Dekker
* Middleton and Rowley
* Thomas Heywood
* Beaumont and Fletcher
* Philip Massinger
* Tourneur and Webster
* Ford and Shirley
* Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
* The Elizabethan Theatre
* The Children of the Chapel Royal and their Masters
* University Plays
* Masque and Pastoral
* The Puritan Attack upon the Stage

#### VII. Cavalier and Puritan.

* Cavalier Lyrists
* The Sacred Poets
* Writers of the Couplet
* Lesser Caroline Poets
* Milton
* Caroline Divines
* John Bunyan. Andrew Marvell
* Historical and Political Writings, I: State Papers and Letters
* Historical and Political Writings, II: Histories and Memoirs
* Antiquaries: Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, Izaak Walton, Sir Thomas Urquhart
* Jacobean and Caroline Criticism
* Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy
* Scholars and Scholarship, 1600–60
* English Grammar Schools
* The Beginnings of English Journalism
* The Advent of Modern Thought in Popular Literature: The Witch Controversy, Pamphleteers

#### VIII. The Age of Dryden.

* Dryden
* Samuel Butler
* Political and Ecclesiastical Satire
* The Early Quakers
* The Restoration Drama, I
* The Restoration Drama, II: Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, etc.
* The Restoration Drama, III: Tragic Poets
* The Court Poets
* The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
* Memoir and Letter Writers
* Platonists and Latitudinarians
* Divines of the Church of England, 1660–1700
* Legal Literature
* John Locke
* The Progress of Science
* The Essay and the Beginning of Modern English Prose

#### IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.

* Defoe—The Newspaper and the Novel
* Steele and Addison
* Pope
* Swift
* Arbuthnot and Lesser Prose Writers
* Lesser Verse Writers
* Historical and Political Writers, I: Burnet
* Historical and Political Writers, II: Bolingbroke
* Memoir-Writers, 1715–60
* Writers of Burlesque and Translators
* Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
* William Law and the Mystics
* Scholars and Antiquaries
* Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
* Education

#### X. The Rise of the Novel: Johnson and his Circle.

* Richardson
* Fielding and Smollett
* Sterne, and the Novel of His Times
* The Drama and the Stage
* Thomson and Natural Description in Poetry
* Gray
* Young, Collins and Lesser Poets of the Age of Johnson
* Johnson and Boswell
* Oliver Goldsmith
* The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages: Macpherson’s Ossian, Chatterton, Percy and the Wartons
* Letter-Writers
* Historians, I: Hume and Modern Historians
* Historians, II: Gibbon
* Philosophers: Hume, Smith and Others
* Divines
* The Literature of Dissent, 1660–1760
* Political Literature, 1755–75

#### XI. The Earlier Georgian Age.

* Edmund Burke
* Political Writers and Speakers
* Bentham and the Early Utilitarians
* William Cowper
* William Wordsworth
* Coleridge
* George Crabbe
* Southey; Lesser Poets of the Eighteenth Century
* Blake
* Burns; Lesser Scottish Verse
* The Prosody of the Eighteenth Century
* The Georgian Drama
* The Growth of the Later Novel
* Book Production and Distribution, 1625–1800
* The Bluestockings
* Children’s Books

#### XII. The Romantic Revival.

* Sir Walter Scott
* Byron
* Shelley
* Keats
* Lesser Poets, 1790–1837: Rogers, Campbell, Moore and Others
* Reviews and Magazines in the Early Years of the Nineteenth Century
* Hazlitt
* Lamb
* The Landors, Leigh Hunt, De Quincey
* Jane Austen
* Lesser Novelists
* The Oxford Movement
* The Growth of Liberal Theology
* Historians: Writers on Ancient and Early Ecclesiastical History
* Scholars, Antiquaries and Bibliographers

#### XIII. The Victorian Age. Part I.

* Carlyle
* The Tennysons
* Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
* Matthew Arnold, Arthur Hugh Clough, James Thomson
* The Rossettis, William Morris, Swinburne and Others
* Lesser Poets of the Middle and Later Nineteenth Century
* The Prosody of the Nineteenth Century
* Nineteenth-Century Drama
* Thackerey
* Dickens
* The Political and Social Novel: Disraeli, Charles Kingsley, Mrs. Gaskell, “George Eliot”
* The Brontës
* Lesser Novelists
* George Meredith, Samuel Butler, George Gissing

#### XIV. The Victorian Age. Part II.

* Philosophers
* Historians, Biographers and Political Orators
* Critical and Miscellaneous Prose: John Ruskin and Others
* The Growth of Journalism
* University Journalism
* Caricature and the Literature of Sport; “Punch”
* The Literature of Travel, 1700–1900
* The Literature of Science
* Anglo-Irish Literature
* Anglo-Indian Literature
* English-Canadian Literature
* The Literature of Australia and New Zealand
* South African Poetry
* Education
* Changes in the Language since Shakespeare’s Time