A History of English Literature

by Robert Huntington Fletcher


TO MY MOTHER TO WHOM I OWE A LIFETIME OF A MOTHER'S MOST SELF-SACRIFICING
DEVOTION




PREFACE


This book aims to provide a general manual of English Literature for
students in colleges and universities and others beyond the high-school
age. The first purposes of every such book must be to outline the
development of the literature with due regard to national life, and to give
appreciative interpretation of the work of the most important authors. I
have written the present volume because I have found no other that, to my
mind, combines satisfactory accomplishment of these ends with a selection
of authors sufficiently limited for clearness and with adequate accuracy
and fulness of details, biographical and other. A manual, it seems to me,
should supply a systematic statement of the important facts, so that the
greater part of the student's time, in class and without, may be left free
for the study of the literature itself.

I hope that the book may prove adaptable to various methods and conditions
of work. Experience has suggested the brief introductory statement of main
literary principles, too often taken for granted by teachers, with much