Spanning the period from the British Civil War to the French Revolution, the fourth edition of this successful anthology increases its coverage of canonical writings, plays, and of the development of British Literature in the American colonies. A thoroughly updated new edition of this popular anthology which focuses firmly on the eighteenth century without neglecting the seventeenth century Contains new texts including the play Rover by Aphra Behn, and Beggars' Opera by John Gay; increased canonical works, including works by Dryden, Pope, and Johnson; and historical contextual materials, with particualr attention to the Americas Features updated introductions throughout, taking into acccount recent critical works and editions Includes useful resources such as an alternative list of contents by theme, and a chronolgy of literary and political events, providing valuable historical and cultural context

Table of Contents:
List of Authors xvii Chronology xix Thematic Table of Contents xxvi Introduction xxxvi Editorial Principles xlv Preface to the Fourth Edition xlvii Acknowledgments xlix Ballads and Newsbooks from the Civil War (1640–1649) 1 The World is Turned Upside Down (1646) 1 The King’s Last farewell to the World, or The Dead King’s Living Meditations, at the approach of Death denounced against Him (1649) 3 The Royal Health to the Rising Sun (1649) 6 from A Perfect Diurnal of Some Passages in Parliament (1649) 7 Number 288, 29 January–5 February 1649 7 from Mercurius Pragmaticus (1649) 8 Number 43, 30 January–6 February 1649 8 Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) 10 from Leviathan (1651) 10 Chapter XIII: Of the NATURAL CONDITION of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery 10 Robert Herrick (1591–1674) 14 from Hesperides (1648) 14 The Argument of His Book 14 To Daffodils 15 The Night-piece, to Julia 15 The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home 16 Upon Julia’s Clothes 17 When he would have his verses read 18 Delight in Disorder 18 To the Virgins, to make much of Time 18 His Return to London 19 The Bad Season Makes the Poet Sad 19 The Pillar of Fame 20 John Milton (1608–1674) 21 from The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; Restored to the Good of Both Sexes, From the bondage of Canon Law, and other mistakes, to Christian freedom, guided by the Rule of Charity. Wherein also many places of Scripture, have recovered their long-lost meaning. Seasonable to be now thought on in the Reformation intended. (1643) 23 Book I: The Preface 23 from Chapter I 26 from Chapter VI 26 from Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England (1644) 27 from Poems (1673) 44 Sonnet 18 (1655) On the Late Massacre in Piemont 44 Sonnet 19 (1652?) “When I Consider how my Light is Spent” 44 Sonnet 16 [To the Lord General Cromwell, 1652] 45 from Paradise Lost (1667) 45 The Verse 47 Book I 47 Book II 66 Book IV 91 Book IX 116 Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) 145 Anacreontiques: Or, Some Copies of Verses Translated Paraphrastically out of Anacreon 145 To the Royal Society 152 Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) 157 from Miscellaneous Poems (1681) 158 The Coronet 158 The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers 158 Bermudas (1653?) 159 The Mower to the Glo-Worms (1651–2?) 161 An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland (1650) 161 The Garden (1651–2?) 164 On a Drop of Dew (1651–2?) 167 To his Coy Mistress (c.1645) 168 Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle (1623–1673) 170 from Poems and Fancies (1653) 170 Poets have most Pleasure in this Life 170 from The Description of a New World, called the Blazing World (1666) 171 John Bunyan (1628–1688) 179 from Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) 179 John Dryden (1631–1700) 183 To My Honoured Friend, Dr Charleton, on his learned and useful Works; and more particularly this of STONE-HENGE, by him Restored to the true Founders (1663) 184 Mac Flecknoe (1676?) 186 Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem (1681) 192 To the Memory of Mr. Oldham (1684) 217 To the Pious Memory of the Accomplished Young LADY Mrs. Anne Killigrew, Excellent in the two Sister-Arts of Poesy, and Painting. An Ode (1686) 218 Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (1687) 223 Alexander’s Feast 225 from Fables Ancient and Modern (1700) 230 Pygmalion and the Statue 230 Secular Masque 232 Katherine Philips (1632–1664) 237 from Poems by the most deservedly Admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda (1667) 237 Friendship 237 Friendship’s Mystery, To my dearest Lucasia 238 Epitaph On her Son H. P. at St. Syth’s Church where her body also lies Interred 240 The Virgin 240 Upon the graving of her Name upon a Tree in Barnelmes Walks 241 To the truly competent Judge of Honour, Lucasia, upon a scandalous Libel made by J. J. 241 To Mrs. Wogan, my Honoured Friend, on the Death of her Husband 243 Orinda to Lucasia 244 Parting with Lucasia, A Song 245 To Antenor, on a Paper of mine which J. J. threatens to publish to prejudice him 246 John Locke (1632–1704) 247 from An Essay concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government (1690) 248 from Chapter 1 248 from Chapter 2 Of the State of Nature 248 from Chapter 4 Of Slavery 250 from Chapter 5 Of Property 251 Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) 253 from Diary 255 July 1665 255 August 1665 258 Aphra Behn (1640?–1689) 260 from Poems upon Several Occasions (1684) 261 The Golden Age: A Paraphrase on a Translation out of French 261 The Disappointment 266 from Lycidus: or the Lover in Fashion (1688) 270 To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman 270 The Rover: Or, The Banished Cavaliers (1677) 270 Oroonoko: or, the Royal Slave. A True History (1688) 333 John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) 376 The Imperfect Enjoyment 376 A Ramble in Saint James’s Park 378 A Satyr against Reason and Mankind 382 The Disabled Debauchee 387 Lampoon 389 [Signior Dildo] 389 A Satire on Charles II 391 A Letter from Artemiza in the Town to Chloe in the Country 392 Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) 399 from An Essay upon Projects (1698) 400 An Academy for Women 400 from The True-Born Englishman: A Satire (1700) 406 Part I 406 The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters: Or Proposals for the Establishment of the Church (1702) 415 A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal, The next Day after Her Death: To One Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury. The 8th of September, 1705 (1706) 425 from the London Gazette 431 Monday, 11 January to Thursday, 14 January 1702 431 Anne Kingsmill Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661–1720) 432 The Introduction 432 Life’s Progress 434 Adam Posed 435 The Petition for an Absolute Retreat 436 To the Nightingale 442 A Poem for the Birth-day of the Right Honourable the Lady Catharine Tufton 443 The Atheist and the Acorn 445 The Unequal Fetters 446 The Answer (to Pope’s Impromptu) 447 The Spleen: A Pindaric Poem (1701; revised 1713) 448 Mary Astell (1666–1731) 452 from A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest. By a Lover of her Sex (1694) 452 Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) 455 A Tale of a Tub Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind (1704) 457 A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents or the Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public (1729) 527 A Description of the Morning (1709) 533 The Lady’s Dressing Room (1732) 534 A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed Written for the Honour of the Fair Sex (1734) 537 A Description of a City Shower (1710) 539 Stella’s Birth-Day (13 March 1719) 541 Delarivier Manley (c.1670–1724) 542 from Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality of Both Sexes. From the New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediterranean (1709) 543 William Congreve (1670–1729) 556 The Way of the World (1700) 557 Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and Richard Steele (1672–1729) 619 from the Spectator 620 Number 11, Tuesday, March 13, 1711 [Inkle and Yarico] 620 Number 159, Saturday, September 1, 1711 [The Visions of Mirzah] 622 Isaac Watts (1674–1748) 626 from Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (1715) 626 Against Quarrelling and Fighting 626 The Sluggard 627 Allan Ramsay (1684–1758) 628 from The Poems of Allan Ramsay (1800) 628 Polwart on the Green (1721) 628 Give Me a Lass with a Lump of Land (1721) 629 John Gay (1685–1732) 630 The Beggar’s Opera (1728) 631 Alexander Pope (1688–1744) 678 An Essay on Criticism (1711) 679 The RAPE of the LOCK. An Heroi-Comical Poem (1714) 696 Eloisa to Abelard (1717) 717 from The Dunciad Variorum (1729) 725 Martinus Scriblerus, of the Poem 725 Dunciados Periocha: or, Arguments to the Books 727 The Dunciad, Book the First 729 from Letters 738 To Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1 September 1718) 738 Mary Collier (1688?–1762) 741 The Woman’s Labour: An Epistle To Mr. Stephen Duck; In Answer to his late Poem, called The Thresher’s Labour… (1739) 741 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) 748 from LETTERS Of the Right Honourable Lady M–y W—y M—u: Written, during her Travels in EUROPE, ASIA and AFRICA, TO Persons of Distinction, Men of Letters, &c. in different Parts of Europe. WHICH CONTAIN, Among other CURIOUS Relations, Accounts of the POLICY and MANNERS of the TURKS; Drawn from Sources that have been inaccessible to other Travellers 748 To the Lady X —— 749 To the Lady —— 750 [To Lady Mar] 752 To Mr. [Alexander] Pope 755 To Mr. [Alexander] P[ope] 756 The Lover (1721–5) 758 The Reasons that Induced Dr. S[wift] to Write a Poem Called the Lady’s Dressing Room (1732–4) 759 To the Memory of Mr Congreve (1729?) 761 [A Summary of Lord Lyttelton’s advice to a Lady] (1731–3) 762 Trials at the Old Bailey (1722–1727) 763 from Select TRIALS at the Sessions House in the Old Bailey (1742) 763 H —— J ——, for a Rape, 1722 763 Gabriel Lawrence, for Sodomy, April, 1726 765 Mary Picart, alias Gandon, for Bigamy, June, 1725 766 Richard Savage, James Gregory, and William Merchant, for Murder, Thursday, Dec. 7, 1727 767 Eliza Fowler Haywood (1693–1756) 772 Fantomina: OR, Love in a Maze (1724) 772 James Thomson (1700–1748) 791 Winter. A Poem (1726) 791 Stephen Duck (1705–1756) 802 from Poems on Several Subjects (1730) 802 from The Thresher’s Labour 802 Mary Jones (1707–1778) 805 from Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1750) 805 Soliloquy, on an Empty Purse 805 After the Small Pox 806 Her Epitaph 807 Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) 809 from The Life of Mr. Richard Savage, Son of the Earl of Rivers (1744) 811 The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) 816 from the Rambler 825 Number 2, Saturday, 24 March 1750 825 Number 28, Saturday, 23 June 1750 828 Number 207, Tuesday, 10 March, 1752 831 From the Idler 834 Number 22, Saturday, 9 September 1758 834 Number 81, Saturday, 3 November 1759 836 from the Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) 837 The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759) 845 from the Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765) 906 David Hume (1711–1776) 914 from Essays Moral and Political (1742) 914 Of the Liberty of the Press 914 from Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects (1777) 917 My Own Life 917 Jane Collier (1714/15–1755) 923 from An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting; with Proper Rules for the Exercise of that Pleasant Art (1753) 923 Thomas Gray (1716–1771) 932 Letter to Richard West (1741) 933 Sonnet [on the Death of Mr Richard West] (1742) 934 Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat (1748) 934 An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) 936 The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric Ode (1768) 939 William Collins (1721–1759) 944 from Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects (1747) 944 Ode to Fear 944 Epode 945 Antistrophe 946 Ode on the Poetical Character 946 from A Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748) 949 Ode to Evening 949 Mary Leapor (1722–1746) 951 from Poems on Several Occasions (1748) 951 The Month of August 951 An Epistle to a Lady 953 Mira’s Will 955 from Poems on Several Occasions (1751) 956 An Essay on Woman 956 Crumble-Hall 958 Man the Monarch 962 Christopher Smart (1722–1771) 965 from Jubilate Agno (c.1758–63) 966 from Fragment A (c.1758–9) 966 from Fragment B (1759–60) 966 Samson Occom (1723–1792) 970 from A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian 970 The PREFACE 970 INTRODUCTION 971 SERMON 971 John Newton (1725–1807) 982 HYMN XLI [Amazing Grace] 982 Oliver Goldsmith (1728?–1774) 984 The Revolution in Low Life (1762) 984 The Deserted Village, a Poem (1770) 986 Edmund Burke (1729–1797) 997 from A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757), Part 2 998 Section 1, Of the Passion caused by the SUBLIME 998 Section 2, TERROR 998 Section 3, OBSCURITY 998 Section 4, Of the difference between CLEARNESS and OBSCURITY with regard to the passions 999 Section [5], The same subject continued 1000 Section 13, Beautiful objects small 1002 Section 14, SMOOTHNESS 1002 Section 15, Gradual VARIATION 1003 Section 16, DELICACY 1004 from Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event In a Letter Intended to have been sent to a Gentleman In Paris (1790) 1004 William Cowper (1731–1800) 1019 On a Goldfinch Starved to Death in his Cage (1782) 1020 Epitaph on an Hare (1784) 1020 To the Immortal Memory of the Halibut on which I Dined this Day (1784) 1021 The Negro’s Complaint (1789) 1022 On a Spaniel Called Beau Killing a Young Bird (1793) 1024 Beau’s Reply 1024 On the Ice Islands Seen floating in the German Ocean (1799) 1025 The Castaway (1799) 1027 James Macpherson (1736–1796) 1029 from Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language (1762) 1029 from Book IV 1029 Thomas Paine (1737–1809) 1032 from Common Sense (1776) 1033 Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, with Concise Remarks on the English Constitution 1033 from The American Crisis (1777) 1036 Number 1 1036 from The Rights of Man: being an Answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution (1791) 1037 The American Declaration of Independence (1776) 1040 James Boswell (1740–1795) 1044 from The Life of Dr Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) 1044 Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi (1741–1821) 1058 from Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. during the Last Twenty Years of his Life (1786) 1058 from Correspondence with Samuel Johnson (1773–5) 1060 Anna Laetitia Aiken Barbauld (1743–1825) 1063 from Poems (1792) 1063 The Mouse’s Petition 1063 Verses Written in an Alcove 1065 from the Monthly Magazine (1797) 1066 Washing-Day 1066 Olaudah Equiano (1745?–1797) 1069 from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789) 1069 Chapter 5 1069 Hannah More (1745–1833) 1082 from Sensibility (1782) 1082 from The Slave Trade (1790) 1084 Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) 1088 The School for Scandal (1777) 1088 Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770) 1137 from Poems, Supposed to have been Written at Bristol, By Thomas Rowley, and Others, in the Fifteenth Century (1777) 1137 An Excelente Balade of Charitie: As wroten bie the gode Prieste Thomas Rowley, 1464 1137 Frances Burney (later d’Arblay) (1752–1840) 1141 from Journals and Letters 1142 27–8 March 1777 1142 22 March 1812 1144 Ann Cromartie Yearsley (1753–1806) 1154 from Poems on Several Occasions (1785) 1154 On Mrs. Montagu 1154 from Poems on Various Subjects (1787) 1156 To Indifference 1156 To those who accuse the Author of Ingratitude 1157 William Blake (1757–1827) 1159 from Songs of Innocence (1789) 1159 Introduction 1159 The Lamb 1160 The Little Black Boy 1161 The Chimney Sweeper 1161 Holy Thursday 1162 Infant Joy 1162 from Songs of Experience (1794) 1163 Introduction 1163 Holy Thursday 1163 The Chimney Sweeper 1164 The Tyger 1164 Ah! Sun-Flower 1165 Robert Burns (1759–1796) 1166 from Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) 1166 Epistle to Davie, A Brother Poet 1166 To a Mouse, On turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785 1171 Address to the Deil 1172 Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) 1177 from A Vindication of the Rights of Men, in a Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; occasioned by his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) 1177 Index of Titles and First Lines 1180 Index to the Introductions and Footnotes 1184