British Literature 1640-1789

Book excerpt: British Literature 1640-1789: An Anthology covers the period between the British Civil War and the French Revolution. It includes the works of a great many authors and provides an invitingly wide variety of genres, forms, opinions, viewpoints, and styles. Canonical literary works are extensively represented and most texts are reprinted in their entirety including, for example, Aphra Behn's Oronooko and John Milton's Paradise Lost from first editions, or in the earliest recoverable versions. Other major works include: Daniel Defoe's The Shortest Way with Dissenters, Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad, Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub and A Modest Proposal, Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas. Selections from contemporary documents (such as court reports) are used to illuminate important cultural and social issues at particular points of history. A central aim has been to represent the period in a way that would have been more recognizable to people who lived at the time than the more conventional collection of great works of literature might do. By including the literature of private life and public life - letters, political ballads, broadsides, mock-epic poetry - DeMaria helps us to revise our sense of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature.