Table of Contents

Preface; Texts; The Anthology: 1. Thomas Malory, 1485, Le Morte d'Arthur; 2. Lord Berners, 1523–5, Sir John Froissart: Of the Chronicles of England etc. (translation); 3. Thomas More, 1551, Utopia (in the translation of Ralph Robynson); 4. Richard Hakluyt, 1598–1600, Principal Navigation, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation; 5. Thomas North, 1579, Plutarch's Lives (translation); 6. Philip Sidney, 1595, An Apologie for Poetrie; 7. John Lyly, 1580, Euphues and his England; 8. Thomas Nashe, 1584, The Unfortunate Traveller; 9. Francis Bacon, 1597, Essays, or Counsels Civil and Moral; 10. Authorised version of the Bible, 1611, Ecclesiastes; 11. Thomas Dekker, 1603, The Wonderful Year 1603; 12. John Donne, 1640, LXXX Sermons; 13. Robert Burton, 1621, The Anatomy of Melancholy; 14. Izaak Walton, 1653, The Compleat Angler; 15. Jeremy Taylor, 1650–1, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying; 16. Thomas Browne, 1658, Urn Burial; 17. John Milton, 1644, Areopagitica; 18. Lord Clarendon, 1702–4, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England; 19. John Bunyan, 1678, The Pilgrim's Progress; 20. Thomas Traherne (1908), Centuries of Meditations; 21. Samuel Pepys, (1825), Diary; 22. John Aubrey, (1813), Brief Lives; 23. John Dryden, 1688, An Essay of Dramatick Poesy; 24. Samuel Johnson, 1779–81, Lives of the Poets; 25. Daniel Defoe, 1722, The Life of Colonel Jack; 26. Jonathan Swift, 1704, A Tale of a Tub; 27. Joseph Addison, 1711, The Spectator; 28. Richard Steele, 1711, The Spectator; 29. Samuel Richardson, 1747–8, Clarissa Harlowe; 30. Henry Fielding, 1749, Tom Jones; 31. Tobias Smollett, 1751, Peregrine Pickle; 32. Laurence Sterne, 1760–7, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy; 33. James Boswell, 1791, Life of Samuel Johnson; 34. Horace Walpole, 1781, Letter to Lady Ossory; 35. Edward Gibbon, 1776–88, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; 36. Edmund Burke, 1790, Reflections on the French Revolution; 37. Jane Austen, 1816, Emma; 38. Walter Scott, 1818, The Heart of Mid-Lothian; 39. William Hazlitt, 1823, The Plain Speaker; 40. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817, Biographia Literaria; 41. John Keats, 1818, Letter to Richard Woodhouse; 42. Charles Lamb, 1823, Essays of Elia; 43. Thomas De Quincey, 1822, Confessions of an English Opium-eater; 44. Walter Savage Landor, 1824–9, Imaginary Conversations; 45. Thomas Carlyle, 1837, The French Revolution; 46. Lord Macaulay, 1843, Critical and Historical Essays; 47. Emily Brontë, 1847, Wuthering Heights; 48. Charlotte Brontë, 1853, Villette; 49. Charles Dickens, 1836–7, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club; 50. William Makepeace Thackeray, 1847–8, Vanity Fair; 51. John Ruskin, 1843–60, Modern Painters; 52. Walter Pater, 1873, The Renaissance; 53. John Henry Newman, 1864, Apologia pro vita sua; 54. Matthew Arnold, 1865, Essays in Criticism; 55. George Elliot, 1860, The Mill on the Floss; 56. Thomas Hardy, 1891, Tess of the d'Urbevilles; 57. Lewis Carroll, 1872, Through the Looking-glass; 58. Robert Louis Stevenson, 1881–3, Treasure Island; 59. George Meredith, 1879, The Egoist; 60. Samuel Butler, 1903, The Way of All Flesh; Commentary; Glossary; A list of the most accessible editions.

Promotional Information

Originally published in 1956, this anthology aims to introduce English prose literature to an audience of new readers.