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THE GREAT ENGLISH

LETTER-WRITERS

By W. J. and C. W. Dawson

The Reader's Library. To be issued in 14 volumes. Each, 16mo, cloth, net $1.00.

Designed to meet the rapidly growing taste for the finest products of literature, which have already attained classical value and importance. The object is thus to present in a concise form a series of volumes, dealing with the growth and development of the various modes of literary expression.

The notes will be of a biographical, historical, and chronological character; each volume will be prefaced by a critical essay.

Dr. W. J. Dawson is already widely known by his books on literature, particularly-THE MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. His reputation as a critic and master of style is firmly established. Mr. Coningsby W. Dawson is a graduate of Oxford University, and a high honor man of the Oxford School of History.

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Vol. I & II The Great English Letter Writers.

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This list will be subject to additions and revision, and the order of publication may be varied.

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Copyright, 1908, by

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street

PREFACE

THE purpose of The Reader's Library is to present in succinct form a survey of English literature. The method adopted is to assemble under generic titles the best specimens of the various branches of literature, in such a way that each volume shall be of equal service to the scholar and the general reader.

The first two volumes of the series, The Great English Letter-Writers, are now presented to the public. The selections have been carefully arranged, with a view not to chronological order so much as to the illustration of the growth of the art of letter-writing. The object of the editors has been to present what may be called a pageant-view of their theme: to show how various men and women, scattered through different ages, have borne themselves under the same crises of emotion or action. That which is obviously lost in abandoning a strictly chronological arrangement is recaptured in the introductory essays to each volume, which aim at a general historic survey of the art of letter-writing, together with a critical estimate of the writers, and of their relationship to the literature of their age. Biographical details concerning these writers are contained in the body of the volume.

Where a subject cannot be adequately treated in one volume, as is the case with The Great Letter-Writers, each volume contains a separate essay, so that it may be, far as is possible, complete in itself.

192662

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