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OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE

BY

60385-

ELIZABETH LEE

LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURF AT STREATHAM HILL
HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

EDMUND K. CHAMBERS

VOL. I.

CHAUCER TO MARLOWE

LONDON

BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C.

GLASGOW AND DUBLIN

1896

PREFATORY NOTE.

The present work, the outcome of several years' practical experience in teaching English literature, is intended as a text-book for the middle forms of schools, and is designed to form a stepping-stone between the bare summary and the more elaborate and extensive critical works. It aims at presenting a descriptive rather than a critical account of English writers from Chaucer to Tennyson, an account in which due proportion is observed between the greater and the lesser writers. It makes no pretension to be exhaustive, and was undertaken solely in the belief that a simple and straightforward account of English literature on the lines here adopted would fill a place yet unoccupied in the schools.

The plan of the book is to deal separately with the lives and works of the greater writers, and to group in classes those of lesser note and importance. An attempt has been made throughout to indicate the relations of the writers to their forerunners, to their own times, and to their successors. The period traversed is divided into four parts, as follows: (1) from Chaucer to Marlowe; (2) from Shakespeare to Dryden; (3) from Pope to Cowper; (4) from Wordsworth to Tennyson. Each of these is provided with a chronological table and an index, and, while complete in itself, fits into the scheme of the whole.

Short illustrative passages from the works of most of the writers are incorporated with the text, but as it was impossible, within the space at command, adequately to represent the work of the greater writers, two companion volumes of selections are being prepared:

(1) Specimens of English poetry from Chaucer to Tennyson. (2) Specimens of English prose from Chaucer to Carlyle.

It is hoped that these will fulfil a useful office among school text-books.

In writing the work a wide range of authorities has necessarily been consulted; to acknowledge special obligations is impossible: it is hoped, therefore, that this general acknowledgment will suffice

December 18th, 1895.

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