The Cambridge History of English Literature

by editors Adolphus William Ward and A. R. Waller

Preface

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

1. The Beginnings
2. Runes and Manuscripts
3. Early National Poetry
4. Old English Christian Poetry
5. Latin Writings in England to the Time of Alfred
6. Alfred and the Old English Prose of his Reign
7. From Alfred to the Conquest
8. The Norman Conquest
9. Latin Chroniclers from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries
10. English Scholars of Paris and Franciscans of Oxford
11. Early Transition English
12. The Arthurian Legend
13. Metrical Romances, 1200–1500: I
14. Metrical Romances, 1200–1500: II
15. “Pearl,” “Cleanness,” “Patience” and “Sir Gawayne”
16. Later Transition English: Legendaries and Chroniclers
17. Later Transition English: Secular Lyrics; Tales; Social Satire
18. The Prosody of Old and Middle English
19. Changes in the Language to the Days of Chaucer
20. The Anglo-French Law Language

II. The End of the Middle Ages.

1. “Piers the Plowman” and its Sequence
2. Religious Movements in the Fourteenth Century
3. The Beginnings of English Prose
4. The Scottish Language: Early and Middle Scots
5. The Earliest Scottish Literature
6. John Gower
7. Chaucer
8. The English Chaucerians
9. Stephen Hawes
10. The Scottish Chaucerians
11. The Middle Scots Anthologies: Anonymous Verse and Early Prose
12. English Prose in the Fifteenth Century, I: Pecock, Fortescue, The Paston Letters
13. The Introduction of Printing into England and the Early Work of the Press
14. English Prose in the Fifteenth Century, II: Caxton, Malory, Berners
15. English and Scottish Education. Universities and Public Schools to the Time of Colet
16. Transition English Song Collections
17. Ballads
18. Political and Religious Verse to the Close of the Fifteenth Century—Final Words

III. Renaissance and Reformation.

1. Englishmen and the Classical Renaissance
2. Reformation Literature in England
3. The Dissolution of the Religious Houses
4. Barclay and Skelton: Early German Influences on English Literature
5. The Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times
6. Sir David Lyndsay (and the Later Scottish “Makaris”)
7. Reformation and Renascence in Scotland
8. The New English Poetry
9. “A Mirror for Magistrates”
10. George Gascoigne
11. The Poetry of Spenser
12. The Elizabethan Sonnet
13. Prosody from Chaucer to Spenser
14. Elizabethan Criticism
15. Chroniclers and Antiquaries
16. Elizabethan Prose Fiction
17. The Marprelate Controversy
18. “Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity”
19. English Universities, Schools and Scholarship in the Sixteenth Century
20. The Language from Chaucer to Shakespeare

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

1. Translators
2. The “Authorised Version” and its Influence
3. Sir Walter Ralegh
4. The Literature of the Sea: From the Origins to Hakluyt
5. Seafaring and Travel: The Growth of Professional Text-Books and Geographical Literature
6. The Song-Books and Miscellanies
7. Robert Southwell. Samuel Daniel
8. Thomas Campion
9. The Successors of Spenser
10. Michael Drayton
11. John Donne
12. The English Pulpit from Fisher to Donne
13. Robert Burton, John Barclay and John Owen
14. The Beginnings of English Philosophy
15. Early Writings on Politics and Economics
16. London and the Development of Popular Literature: Character Writing, Satire, The Essay
17. Writers on Country Pursuits and Pastimes
18. The Book-Trade, 1557–1625
19. The Foundation of Libraries

V. The Drama to 1642. Part I.

1. Introductory: The Origins of English Drama
2. Secular Influences on the Early English Drama: Minstrels, Village Festivals, Folk-Plays
3. The Early Religious Drama: Miracle-Plays and Moralities
4. Early English Tragedy
5. Early English Comedy
6. The Plays of the University Wits
7. Marlowe and Kyd
8. Shakespeare: Life and Plays
9. Shakespeare: Poems
10. Plays of Uncertain Authorship Attributed to Shakespeare
11. The Text of Shakespeare
12. Shakespeare on the Continent, 1660–1700
13. Lesser Elizabethan Dramatists
14. Some Political and Social Aspects of the Later Elizabethan and Earlier Stewart Period

VI. The Drama to 1642. Part II.

1. Ben Jonson
2. Chapman, Marston, Dekker
3. Middleton and Rowley
4. Thomas Heywood
5. Beaumont and Fletcher
6. Philip Massinger
7. Tourneur and Webster
8. Ford and Shirley
9. Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
10. The Elizabethan Theatre
11. The Children of the Chapel Royal and their Masters
12. University Plays
13. Masque and Pastoral
14. The Puritan Attack upon the Stage

VII. Cavalier and Puritan.

1. Cavalier Lyrists
2. The Sacred Poets
3. Writers of the Couplet
4. Lesser Caroline Poets
5. Milton
6. Caroline Divines
7. John Bunyan. Andrew Marvell
8. Historical and Political Writings, I: State Papers and Letters
9. Historical and Political Writings, II: Histories and Memoirs
10. Antiquaries: Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, Izaak Walton, Sir Thomas Urquhart
11. Jacobean and Caroline Criticism
12. Hobbes and Contemporary Philosophy
13. Scholars and Scholarship, 1600–60
14. English Grammar Schools
15. The Beginnings of English Journalism
16. The Advent of Modern Thought in Popular Literature: The Witch Controversy, Pamphleteers

VIII. The Age of Dryden.

1. Dryden
2. Samuel Butler
3. Political and Ecclesiastical Satire
4. The Early Quakers
5. The Restoration Drama, I
6. The Restoration Drama, II: Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, etc.
7. The Restoration Drama, III: Tragic Poets
8. The Court Poets
9. The Prosody of the Seventeenth Century
10. Memoir and Letter Writers
11. Platonists and Latitudinarians
12. Divines of the Church of England, 1660–1700
13. Legal Literature
14. John Locke
15. The Progress of Science
16. The Essay and the Beginning of Modern English Prose

IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.

1. Defoe—The Newspaper and the Novel
2. Steele and Addison
3. Pope
4. Swift
5. Arbuthnot and Lesser Prose Writers
6. Lesser Verse Writers
7. Historical and Political Writers, I: Burnet
8. Historical and Political Writers, II: Bolingbroke
9. Memoir-Writers, 1715–60
10. Writers of Burlesque and Translators
11. Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
12. William Law and the Mystics
13. Scholars and Antiquaries
14. Scottish Popular Poetry before Burns
15. Education

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

1. Richardson
2. Fielding and Smollett
3. Sterne, and the Novel of His Times
4. The Drama and the Stage
5. Thomson and Natural Description in Poetry
6. Gray
7. Young, Collins and Lesser Poets of the Age of Johnson
8. Johnson and Boswell
9. Oliver Goldsmith
10. The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages: Macpherson’s Ossian, Chatterton, Percy and the Wartons
11. Letter-Writers
12. Historians, I: Hume and Modern Historians
13. Historians, II: Gibbon
14. Philosophers: Hume, Smith and Others
15. Divines
16. The Literature of Dissent, 1660–1760
17. Political Literature, 1755–75

XI. The Earlier Georgian Age.

1. Edmund Burke
2. Political Writers and Speakers
3. Bentham and the Early Utilitarians
4. William Cowper
5. William Wordsworth
6. Coleridge
7. George Crabbe
8. Southey; Lesser Poets of the Eighteenth Century
9. Blake
10. Burns; Lesser Scottish Verse
11. The Prosody of the Eighteenth Century
12. The Georgian Drama
13. The Growth of the Later Novel
14. Book Production and Distribution, 1625–1800
15. The Bluestockings
16. Children’s Books

XII. The Romantic Revival.

1. Sir Walter Scott
2. Byron
3. Shelley
4. Keats
5. Lesser Poets, 1790–1837: Rogers, Campbell, Moore and Others
6. Reviews and Magazines in the Early Years of the Nineteenth Century
7. Hazlitt
8. Lamb
9. The Landors, Leigh Hunt, De Quincey
10. Jane Austen
11. Lesser Novelists
12. The Oxford Movement
13. The Growth of Liberal Theology
14. Historians: Writers on Ancient and Early Ecclesiastical History
15. Scholars, Antiquaries and Bibliographers

XIII. The Victorian Age. Part I.

1. Carlyle
2. The Tennysons
3. Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
4. Matthew Arnold, Arthur Hugh Clough, James Thomson
5. The Rossettis, William Morris, Swinburne and Others
6. Lesser Poets of the Middle and Later Nineteenth Century
7. The Prosody of the Nineteenth Century
8. Nineteenth-Century Drama
9. Thackerey
10. Dickens
11. The Political and Social Novel: Disraeli, Charles Kingsley, Mrs. Gaskell, “George Eliot”
12. The Brontës
13. Lesser Novelists
14. George Meredith, Samuel Butler, George Gissing

XIV. The Victorian Age. Part II.

1. Philosophers
2. Historians, Biographers and Political Orators
3. Critical and Miscellaneous Prose: John Ruskin and Others
4. The Growth of Journalism
5. University Journalism
6. Caricature and the Literature of Sport; “Punch”
7. The Literature of Travel, 1700–1900
8. The Literature of Science
9. Anglo-Irish Literature
10. Anglo-Indian Literature
11. English-Canadian Literature
12. The Literature of Australia and New Zealand
13. South African Poetry
14. Education
15. Changes in the Language since Shakespeare’s Time