1.

John Wycliffe(1330-1384)
• John Wycliffe was an English theologian, priest, and scholar, recognized as a forerunner to
the Protestant Reformation in Europe.
• He was born in the North of England and educated at Oxford University and he soon became
famous there for his learning and his skill in debate.
• He was a highly significant figure in the religious culture of 14th-century England, and his works
remained influential for hundreds of years.
• In a later age he was called the ‘morning star of the Reformation’ by Protestant historians,
meaning that his ideas were thought to have laid the foundations of the religious reform which
took place in England in the 1530s.
• His ideas were spread by his followers, known as Lollards, who also assisted him in translating
the Bible from Latin into Middle English.
• The Bible at this time was only available in Latin, which few people outside the educated clergy
could read. Any suggestion that the Bible should be translated into the vernacular of the time,
such as English, was regarded as heresy and anyone who attempted it as a dangerous threat to
the Church. Wycliffe, however, noted that St. Jerome had himself translated the work from the
original languages to the vernacular of his day, Latin, so commenced his own translation from
Latin to English in the early 1380s, with the first version appearing in 1382. The Bible in the
vernacular was a direct challenge to church authority, which no longer controlled how the
scriptures were to be understood.
• Wycliffe was condemned as a heretic, after his death, his remains were dug up, burned, and
thrown into the River Swift.
• Wycliffe's other works include: The Last Age of the Church (1356), Objections to Friars (1380), The last
age of the pope(1381)

2. Thomas Kyd
• Thomas Kyd (1558 – 1594) was an English dramatist who gained great popularity in his own day
but faded into almost complete obscurity after his death until, centuries later, he was
rediscovered. He is now considered by scholars to be one of the most influential dramatists of the
early Elizabethan period.
• He is best known for "The Spanish Tragedy," a play that was a great popular success and did
much to influence the course of English tragedy of the late Renaissance. Although somewhat
crude both dramatically and poetically, this extremely popular play did much to shape the
greater tragedies of the later Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. It is the earliest example in
English of the "revenge play," or "tragedy of blood," which was later developed and refined by
such dramatists as Shakespeare, George Chapman, and John Webster.
• Kyd's name has long been associated with an early Hamlet play. This play, which is commonly
referred to as the Ur-Hamlet, has not survived. Scholars are now inclined to believe that the play
did in fact exist and that Shakespeare probably made use of it for his masterpiece, but most are
agreed that there is no firm evidence for associating this play with Kyd.
• Kyd died in April 1594, apparently in poverty and disgrace as a result of his difficulties with the
law. He was buried in London.
 3. Philip Sidney
• Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) was an English poet, courtier, scholar and soldier who is
remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan age.
• After Shakespeare’s sonnets, Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella is considered the
finest Elizabethan sonnet cycle. His The Defence of Poesie introduced the critical ideas
of Renaissance theorists to England.
• He did not think of himself as a writer in the conventional sense. He had an obvious passion for
politics and foreign policy, one that proved evident in his continued involvement with Queen
Elizabeth and her court. Sidney used his talent for writing, and the influence it allowed him, to
attempt the changes he hoped to see in his country. Though Sidney was considered to be a very
private person, he seemed to have also used writing as a way to express emotions, thoughts, and
ideas that he could not express in his daily life.
• Sidney was highly devoted to his work as a courtier and was even deemed the “Great Favourite”
of the Elizabeth.
• Sidney is said to have had an elaborate and expensive funeral procession. As a beloved courtier,
Sidney was mourned throughout England. Sidney was not only an influential writer and
advocate of the arts, but also embodied the characteristics of “an ideal courtier”

4. George Chapman
• George Chapman (1559 –1634) was an English dramatist, translator and poet who was an
important figure in the English Renaissance.
• He is best known for his rhyming verse translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
• Chapman’s first published work was The Shadow of Night (1594), composed of two hymns, one to
Night and one to Cynthia. This obscure philosophical poem has led some to speculate that
Chapman at this time belonged to the "School of Night"—a group of avant-garde thinkers who
supposedly challenged traditional beliefs. Although the existence of such a formal "school" is still
in doubt, it is clear that Chapman was acquainted with some of the more exciting thinkers of his
day.
• Chapman's reputation as a man of letters was firmly established by Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)
and his continuation of Christopher Marlowe's Hero and Leander (1598). Chapman's best-known
dramatic work, is the heroic tragedy Bussy D'Ambois (1604), which celebrates the lofty aspirations
of Renaissance individualism.

5. Ben Jonson
• Jonson, Ben (1572-1637), English dramatist and poet, whose classical learning, gift for satire, and
brilliant style made him one of the great figures of English literature.
• He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William
Shakespeare, during the reign of James I.
• Although Jonson's creative talents were many and varied, his considerable effect on English
literature of the Jacobean and Carolinian periods was probably the result of his critical theories.
• He sought to advance English drama as a form of literature, attempting to make it a conscious art
through adherence to classical forms and rules.
• He protested particularly against the mixing of tragedy and comedy and was an effective
advocate of the principles of drama established by Aristotle, which he praised at the expense of
the flexibility and improvisational qualities of dramatists such as Shakespeare.
• Jonson's importance today rests upon his comedies of manners and their witty, hilarious
portrayal of contemporary London life.
• Among his major plays are the comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1605),
Epicoene; or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614).

6. John Webster
• John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist
• Though John Webster is considered one of the major figures of Jacobean drama, relatively little is
known about his life.
• Webster has sometimes been criticized for the limited scope of his plays. He knows nothing, for
instance, of the tenderness and pleasant fantasy of Shakespeare. It was mankind's anguish and
evil alone which captured his imagination. But his verse is poetry of the highest order and holds
its own with the best of Marlowe and Shakespeare.
• T.S. Eliot described Webster as the poet who was "much possessed by death, and saw the skull
beneath the skin."
• He is best known for writing the tragedies The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil, the two most
frequently staged Jacobean plays not written by Shakespeare.
• In The White Devil, the beautiful and spirited Vittoria falls under the spell of the dashing Duke
Brachiano. At first, they are able to conceal their love affair, but when they feel their affair
threatened, overcome by the fear of losing one another, they murder the suspicious husband
Camillo. Even so, Vittoria is no cheap murderess. Webster creates a complex and compelling
character who is simply not willing to abide those who stand in the way of her passion, and in
the process, he creates one of the most exciting lovers' quarrels in all of dramatic literature.
• In his other masterpiece, The Duchess of Malfi, Webster deals with a more innocent pair of lovers.
The widowed Duchess of Malfi is forbidden to marry again by her brothers--Duke Ferdinand and
the Cardinal--because they covet her estate. Unbeknownst to her brothers, however, the Duchess
falls in love with her steward Antonio, and they marry secretly. The two lovers live happily for a
time and the Duchess gives birth to three children, but when their marriage is discovered, the evil
of the world stages a macabre dance around the little family from which there is no escape. A
splendid nightmare, The Duchess of Malfi bears witness to a sensitive spirit, overwhelmed by the
horror and despair of the world.
 7. Thomas Heywood
• Thomas Heywood (1570–1641) was an English playwright, actor, and author.
• He was born in England, and was a contemporary of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.
• Many details of Heywood’s life are unknown or speculative.

• The Four Prentices of London (ca. 1600), A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603), and The Rape of
Lucrece (1608) are the most important surviving plays which can be assigned with confidence to
his pen.
• A Woman Killed with Kindness, one of the finest tragedies of the "bourgeois, " or "domestic, " type,
is universally regarded as Heywood's masterpiece. Mistress Anne Frankford, a virtuous and
happy middle-class wife, unaccountably surrenders her honor to Wendoll, a man whom Master
Frankford had befriended and received as a guest in his house. Mistress Frankford's punishment,
repentance, and deathbed reconciliation with her husband are skillfully presented. Heywood
throughout preserves sympathy for his heroine without relaxing his high moral tone.
• Heywood also produced a number of nondramatic works, including translations, poems, and
pamphlets on various topics. The most notable of these nondramatic works is the Apology for
Actors
• His long and fruitful but unspectacular career came to an end in 1641, when he was buried in St.
James's Church in the Clerkenwell section of London.

8. Sir Thomas More

• Thomas More, in full Sir Thomas More, also called Saint Thomas More, (1478—1535),
English humanist and statesman, chancellor of England (1529–32), who was beheaded for
refusing to accept King Henry VIII as head of the Church of England. He is recognized as
a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.
• he was representative of the lively intellectual culture which had evolved in fifteenth century
London and which provided a platform for the early manifestations of humanism.
• he was a prolific writer, but because much that he wrote was theological in nature and written in
Latin, it has had little circulation since his time.
• The best known of his works after Utopia was A History of Richard III.
• He wrote Utopia, published in 1516, which describes the political system of an imaginary island
state.
• His conscientious refusal to support King Henry's campaign to repudiate his marriage to
Katherine of Aragon led to his retirement from public life and, ultimately, to imprisonment.
During fourteen months in the Tower he wrote a number of devotional works which are in
contrast to the severity of his polemical writings.
• Tried for treason, More was beheaded on 6 July 1535. His death caused widespread indignation
on the Continent, where he was initially seen as a model of integrity, a Seneca-like counsellor
who resisted a tyrannical ruler. His status as a Catholic martyr emerged later under the influence
of the English Counter-Reformation.
 1. Daniel Defoe
• Daniel Defoe (1660 – 1731) was an English
writer, merchant, journalist, pamphleteer, social critic, and spy. . A well-
educated London merchant, he became an acute economic theorist and began
to write eloquent, witty, often audacious tracts on public affairs.
• A satire he published resulted in his being imprisoned in 1703, and his business
collapsed. He traveled as a government secret agent while continuing to write
prolifically.
• In 1704–13 he wrote practically single-handedly the periodical Review, a serious
and forceful paper that influenced later essay periodicals such as The Spectator.
• Late in life he turned to fiction. He achieved literary immortality with the
novel Robinson Crusoe (1719), which drew partly on memoirs of voyagers and
castaways.
• Published when Defoe was in his late fifties, Robinson Crusoe relates the story of
a man's shipwreck on a desert island for twenty-eight years and his subsequent
adventures. Throughout its episodic narrative, Crusoe's struggles with faith are
apparent as he bargains with God in times of life-threatening crises, but time and
again he turns his back after his deliverances. He is finally content with his lot in
life, separated from society, following a more genuine conversion experience.
• He is also remembered for the vivid, picaresque Moll Flanders (1722); the
nonfictional Journal of the Plague Year (1722), on the Great Plague in London in
1664–65; and Roxana (1724), a prototype of the modern novel.

2. Matthew Prior
• Matthew Prior (1664 –1721) was an English poet and diplomat. He is also known as a
contributor to The Examiner.
• Matthew Prior was the most important poet writing in England between the death
of John Dryden and the poetic maturity of Alexander Pope.
• Prior made friends with Charles Montague and would collaborate on satirical works such
as City Mouse and Country Mouse.
• He is noted for the range of work that he produced from humorous poems to more
ambitious epic works. Although he was largely successful as a poet, he often treated it
as a pleasurable pastime rather than a true calling.
• Matthew Prior’s poetry is very diverse and includes a lot of love poetry, satirical works,
eulogies, and adaptations from the classics. His poems are often humorous but
demonstrate an underlying scholarly mind and considerable narrative skill. Some of his
best known works are Jinny the Just, based on Jane Ansley, his first mistress and
 housekeeper, Hans Carvel, To a Child of Quality of Five Years Old, On the Taking of
Namur by the King of Britain, Henry and Emma, and The Garland.
• He was buried in Westminster Abbey and a monument to his life stands in Poet’s
Corner.

3. George Farquhar
• George Farquhar, (1678—1707), Irish playwright of real comic power who wrote for
the English stage at the beginning of the 18th century. He stood out from his
contemporaries for originality of dialogue and a stage sense that doubtless stemmed
from his experience as an actor.
• He was educated at Foyle College and later entered Trinity College Dublin
• He is noted for his contributions to late Restoration comedy, particularly for his
plays The Constant Couple (1699), The Recruiting Officer (1706) and The Beaux'
Stratagem (1707), the latter of which was written while he was dying.
• The Beaux’s Stratagem is his last play. It is his most successful and popular play.
Aimwell and Archer, two poor men, turn up at Lichfield disguised as master and
servant. They are on the lookout for a rich wife for Aimwell, intending to split the
proceeds. Aimwell courts Dorinda, the daughter of a rich man and Archer carries on
a flirtation with the landlord’s daughter Cherry and simultaneously pursues the
unhappily married Mrs Sullen Aimwell. While about to win Dorinda, Aimwell
discloses to her about his deception. He gives all his money to Archer, who however
does not find a wife and remains single. The action ends in favor of Aimwell, as he
inherits some estate.
• He also wrote a novella, The Adventures of Covent Garden(1698) and Love and
Business(1702), consisting of letters and poems, including a self-portrait.

4. Aphra Behn
• Aphra Behn ( 1640 –1689) was an English playwright, poet, prose writer and translator
from the Restoration era.
• As one of the first English women to earn her living by her writing, she broke cultural
barriers and served as a literary role model for later generations of women authors.
• Rising from obscurity, she came to the notice of Charles II, who employed her as a spy
in Antwerp.
• Behn’s early works were tragicomedies in verse.
• Though Behn wrote many plays, her fiction today draws more interest. Her
short novel Oroonoko (1688) tells the story of an enslaved African prince whom Behn
claimed to have known in South America. Its engagement with the themes of slavery,
race, and gender, as well as its influence on the development of the English novel,
 helped to make it, by the turn of the 21st century, her best-known work. Behn’s other
fiction included the multipart epistolary novel Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His
Sister (1684–87) and The Fair Jilt (1688).
• Behn’s versatility, like her output, was immense; she wrote other popular works of
fiction, and she often adapted works by older dramatists. She also wrote poetry, the
bulk of which was collected in Poems upon Several Occasions, with A Voyage to the
Island of Love (1684) and Lycidus; or, The Lover in Fashion (1688).
• She died in 1689, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The inscription on her
tombstone reads: "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against
Mortality."

5. Samuel Richardson
• Samuel Richardson (1689 –1761) was an English writer and printer known for
three epistolary novels: Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a
Young Lady (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753)
• Richardson's literary career began after he was in his fifties and well-established as a
printer
• Richardson is widely considered to be the inventor of the epistolary novel—that is, a
novel written in the form of a collection of letters and other correspondence between
the principal characters—and all three of his novels utilize the epistolary form.
• He is considered the originator of the modern English novel and has also been called the
first dramatic novelist as well as the first of the eighteenth-century “sentimental”
writers. He introduced tragedy to the novel form and substituted social embarrassment
for tragic conflict, thus developing the first novel of manners.
• Richardson claimed to have written indexes, prefaces, and dedications early in his
career, but his first known work, published in 1733, was The Apprentice's Vade Mecum;
or, Young Man's Pocket Companion, a conduct book addressed to apprentices.
• Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded (1740). A wild commercial success, this first epistolary
novel tells the redemptive story of a housemaid who maintains her virtue and is
rewarded by her successful marriage to a wealthy man who becomes virtuous following
her lead.
• Richardson's works are largely the reflection of the man himself, and, in spite of their
faults and limitations, are of immense importance in the development of the novel.

6. Laurence Sterne
• Laurence Sterne, (1713—1768), was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric who
wrote the novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A
 Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, published sermons and memoirs, and
indulged in local politics.
• Sterne attended Jesus College, Cambridge
• Though popular during his lifetime, Sterne became even more celebrated in the 20th
century, when modernist and postmodernist writers rediscovered him as an innovator
in textual and narrative forms.
• Sterne began what would become his best-known work, The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, at a moment of personal crisis. He and his wife were both ill with
consumption, and, in the same year that the first volumes of Sterne’s long comic novel
appeared, his mother and uncle Jacques died. The blend of sentiment, humour and
philosophical exploration that characterises Sterne’s works matured during this difficult
period. Tristram Shandy was an enormous success, and Sterne became, for the first time
in his life, a famous literary figure in London.
• Laurence Sterne died in 1768, and was buried three times: once in the graveyard of St.
George’s, Hanover Square; again when he was recognized after having been disinterred
for anatomists; and finally, when development took place at the London burial ground,
his skull and a femur were taken to Coxwold and buried outside the church where he
was once the preacher.

7. Thomas Gray
• Thomas Gray was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at
Pembroke College, Cambridge.
• Gray was a self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being
very popular.
• He was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1757 after the death of Colley
Cibber, though he declined.
• He once wrote that he feared his collected works would be “mistaken for the works of a
flea.
• Gray was largely influenced by his travel throughout Britain, particularly in the Lake
District where he would search for picturesque landscapes and ancient monuments. He
also uses Gothic details in his writing, which were, in part, foreshadowing of the
Romantic movement that dominated the early 19th century, when William
Wordsworth and the other Lake poets taught people to value the picturesque, the
sublime, and the Gothic.
• He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751.
• The poem argues that the remembrance can be good and bad, and the narrator finds
comfort in pondering the lives of the obscure rustics buried in the churchyard. The
poem is an elegy in name but not in form and has a style more similar to that of
 contemporary odes. It is reflective, calm, and stoic in tone and is one of the most
popular and frequently quoted poems in the English language.
• He lived most of his life in Cambridge, and enjoyed travelling around Britain. He died in
1771 aged 54, after a short illness.

8. Edward Gibbon
• Edward Gibbon (1737 –1794) was an English historian, writer, and member of
parliament.
• Educated at the university of Oxford and in Switzerland, Gibbon wrote his early works in
French.
• In London he became a member of Samuel Johnson’s brilliant intellectual circle.
• Gibbon is widely regarded as a typical man of the Enlightenment, dedicated to asserting
the claims of reason over superstition, to understanding history as a rational process,
and to replacing divine revelation with sociological explanations for the rise of religion
• Gibbon's prose, influenced and molded by his classical readings and his French studies,
has dignity, harmony, grandeur, majesty, vigor, and wit, eschewing easy
pomposity. according to British cultural historian Peter Ackroyd, Gibbon’s style was a
precursor of Romanticism and “the harbinger of the Gothic and the ‘sensational’ in
literary fashion.”
• On a trip to Rome he was inspired to write the history of the city. His Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, is a continuous narrative from the 2nd century AD to the fall of
Constantinople in 1453. Though Gibbon’s conclusions have been modified by later
scholars, his acumen, historical perspective, and superb literary style have given his
work its lasting reputation as one of the greatest historical works.
 1. John Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
• Though he died in 1700, John Dryden is usually considered a writer of the 18th rather than the
17th century.
• “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” was probably written in 1666 during the closure of the London
theaters due to plague.
• It can be read as a general defense of drama as a legitimate art form—taking up where Sir Philip
Sidney’s “Defence of Poesie” left off—as well as Dryden’s own defense of his literary practices.
• The essay is structured as a dialogue among four friends on the river Thames.
• The group has taken refuge on a barge during a naval battle between the English and the Dutch
fleets. The four gentlemen, Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius, and Neander (all aliases for actual
Restoration critics and the last for Dryden himself), begin an ironic and witty conversation on
the subject of poetry, which soon turns into a debate on the virtues of modern and ancient
writers.
• While imitation of classical writers was common practice in Dryden’s time, he steers the group’s
conversation towards dramatic poetry, a relatively new genre which had in some ways broken
with classical traditions and was thus in need of its own apologia. The group arrives at a
definition of drama: Lisideius suggests that it is “a just and lively Image of Humane
Nature.” Each character then speaks in turn, touching on the merits of French and English
drama. Drawing on Platonic dialogues for inspiration, Dryden’s characters present their opinions
with eloquence and sound reasoning. The group discusses playwrights such as Ben Jonson,
Molière, and Shakespeare with great insight, and has a final debate over the suitability of rhyme
to drama. During this final speech, the barge docks at the Somerset-Stairs, and the four friends
go their separate ways, content with their evening.

2. John Bunyan:The Pilgrim’s Progress

• John Bunyan was an itinerant tinker and a non-comformist who spent many years in prison for
refusing to obey injunctions not to preach. He wrote the greater part of Pilgrim’s Progress while
in Bedford Gaol.
• The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come is a 1678 Christian allegory.
• During the later 18th and the 19th centuries it became regarded in Britain as essential family
reading, and has been claimed as one of the 10 most published books of all time.
• It is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and
a progenitor of the narrative aspect of Christian media.
• It has been translated into more than 200 languages and never been out of print.
• The work is a symbolic vision of the good man's pilgrimage through life.
• On the surface, the story follows a man named Christian as he leaves the City of Destruction and
journeys to a place called the Celestial City, encountering all sorts of roadblocks and fearsome
creatures along the way. But on a deeper level, Pilgrim’s Progress charts the journey of an
average Christian person as they strive to leave behind their destructive, sinful ways and get to
Heaven.
• The story of Christian’s journey is actually a dream that the book’s unnamed narrator is having.
In the narrator’s dream, Christian is carrying a heavy burden on his back—the weight of his
sins—and doesn’t know how to get rid of it. He’s also struggling with the knowledge that his
 hometown, the City of Destruction, will soon be destroyed by a fire. When he tells his wife and
kids this, though, they think he’s delirious, and they mock and reject him.

3. Samuel Richardson: Pamela

• Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel first published in 1740 by English
writer Samuel Richardson. epistolary novel just means that it's written as letters from one
character to others. Oftentimes there is a central character who corresponds with many
characters; sometimes you'll see different kinds of correspondence in an epistolary novel.
• Pamela is often credited with being the first English novel. Although the validity of this claim
depends on the definition of the term novel, Richardson was clearly innovative in his
concentration on a single action.
• Richardson, a 51-year-old printer when the novel was published, began the project to
provide moral instruction to young women who might find themselves vulnerable to
seduction while employed by wealthy men. The novel advocates for the importance of
maintaining virtuous and honorable conduct in the face of temptation, and explores
themes of class, gender, and inequality.
• Pamela Andrews is a 15-year-old servant. On the death of her mistress, her mistress’s son,
“Mr. B,” begins a series of stratagems designed to seduce her. These failing, he abducts her
and ultimately threatens to rape her. Pamela resists, and soon afterward Mr. B offers
marriage—an outcome that Richardson presents as a reward for her virtue. The second half
of the novel shows Pamela winning over those who had disapproved of the misalliance.

4. Jonathan Swift: The Modest Proposal

• A Modest Proposal, in full A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from
Being a Burthen to their Parents, or the Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick,
satiric essay by Jonathan Swift, published in pamphlet form in 1729.
• He wrote “A Modest Proposal” as an attempt to convince the Irish Parliament to improve the
conditions of the poor. Swift used the idea of eating children as a metaphor for what he saw as
the exploitation of the poor, such as the high rents charged by landlords.
• The tract is an ironically conceived attempt to "find out a fair, cheap, and easy Method" for
converting the starving children of Ireland into "sound and useful members of the
Commonwealth." Across the country poor children, predominantly Catholics, are living in
squalor because their families are too poor to keep them fed and clothed.
• The author argues, by hard-edged economic reasoning as well as from a self-righteous moral
stance, for a way to turn this problem into its own solution. His proposal, in effect, is to fatten
up these undernourished children and feed them to Ireland's rich land-owners. Children of the
poor could be sold into a meat market at the age of one, he argues, thus combating
overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families the expense of child-bearing while
providing them with a little extra income, improving the culinary experience of the wealthy, and
contributing to the overall economic well-being of the nation.
• The author offers statistical support for his assertions and gives specific data about the number
of children to be sold, their weight and price, and the projected consumption patterns. He
 suggests some recipes for preparing this delicious new meat, and he feels sure that innovative
cooks will be quick to generate more. He also anticipates that the practice of selling and eating
children will have positive effects on family morality: husbands will treat their wives with more
respect, and parents will value their children in ways hitherto unknown. His conclusion is that
the implementation of this project will do more to solve Ireland's complex social, political, and
economic problems than any other measure that has been proposed.

5. Alexander Pope: Essay on Criticism

• An Essay on Criticism is one of the first major poems written by the English writer Alexander
Pope (1688–1744), published in 1711.
• It is the source of the famous quotations "To err is human; to forgive, divine", "A little
learning is a dang'rous thing", and "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread".
• "An Essay on Criticism" is a three-part poem in which Alexander Pope shares his thoughts on
the proper rules and etiquette for critics. Critics assail Pope's work, his background, his
religion, and his physical appearance throughout his career. Pope has a lot to say to critics
about their common mistakes and how they could do their job in such a way that
intelligently supports the literary process.Pope's epigrams, or clever literary sayings with a
moral about the common mistakes critics make, remain in wide use today.
• "An Essay on Criticism" can be understood as a nonfiction persuasive essay that rhymes.
• Some conventions in the poem reflect widely used conventions of the time in which Pope
wrote. He often uses contractions for words ending in "ed," such as "devis'd" and
"methodiz'd." Pope also practices the use of capital letters to emphasize important ideas.
These capital letters do not follow a consistent grammatical rule. Instead they serve as
marks of personal style and voice.

6. Johnson: The Vanity of Human Wishes

• Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [OS 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often
called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet,
playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in
English history"
• The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated is a poem by the
English author Samuel Johnson.
• It was written in late 1748 and published in 1749.
• It was begun and completed while Johnson was busy writing A Dictionary of the English
Language and it was the first published work to include Johnson's name on the title page.
• The Vanity of Human Wishes is a poem of 368 lines, written in closed heroic couplets.
Johnson loosely adapts Juvenal's original satire to demonstrate "the complete inability of the
world and of worldly life to offer genuine or permanent satisfaction."
• The poem follows the model of Juvenal’s tenth satire. But, vary with the theme when
Johnson put focus on Christianity as the only way to get happiness. Juvenal’s poems do not
center on the Christianity. This poem can be taken as a satire against all those who want to
gather the wealth power and property. Since the end is same, the quest of the things is
useless.
 7. Johnson: The Lives of the Most Eminent Poets
• Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [OS 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often called Dr
Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist,
moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history"
• Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81), alternatively known by the shorter title Lives
of the Poets, is a work by Samuel Johnson comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of
52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century. These were arranged,
approximately, by date of death.
• among the major lives are those of Abraham Cowley, John Milton, John Dryden, Joseph Addison,
and Alexander Pope; some of the minor ones, such as those of William Collins and William
Shenstone, are striking.
• Johnson divided his biographies into three distinct parts: a narrative of the poet’s life, a
presentation of his character (summarized traits), and a critical assessment of his main poems.
He adopted this method not because he failed to perceive relationships between a poet’s life
and his works but because he did not think that a good poet was necessarily a good man.
• Johnson responded most favourably to the works of poets from Dryden to Pope and was
skeptical of those produced in his own generation, including the poetry of Gray, Collins, and
Shenstone, though he admired Gray’s An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard.

8. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of Rights of Women

• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was a British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's
rights. She was buried in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church, where her tombstone reads
"Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), is
one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy.
• In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the eighteenth
century who did not believe women should receive a rational education. She argues that women
ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women
are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be
"companions" to their husbands, rather than mere wives.
• Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage,
Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights
as men.
• Although it is commonly assumed that the Rights of Woman was unfavourably received, this is a
modern misconception based on the belief that Wollstonecraft was as reviled during her
lifetime. The Rights of Woman was generally received well when it was first published in 1792.
Biographer Emily W. Sunstein called it "perhaps the most original book of [Wollstonecraft's]
century".
 1. William Lisle Bowles
• William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850) was an English priest, poet and critic.
• He got educated from Trinity College, Oxford.
• Whilst at university, he showed a potential for poetry and won the Chancellor's prize
for Latin verse.
• He is most popularly remembered for his short collection of poems called Fourteen
Sonnets published in 1789 which he wrote in his thirties and received good reviews from
contemporaries such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Sonnets were a return to an
older and purer poetic style, and by their grace of expression, lyrical versification, tender
tone of feeling and vivid appreciation of the wonder and beauty of nature, stood out in
marked contrast to the elaborate works which then formed the bulk of English poetry.
• Successful in his career as a vicar, Bowles wrote poetry largely as a diversion rather than
to make a living as many of his peers had done.
• His career as a critic was illustrious. He produced editions of poets such as Virgil as well
as several English poets.
• Bowles passed away in 1850 at the age of 87 and a collection of his full works was
published by his friend George Gilfillan in two large volumes a few years after his death.

2. Samuel Rogers
• Samuel Rogers (1763 –1855) was an English poet, during his lifetime one of the most
celebrated, although his fame has long since been eclipsed by
his Romantic colleagues and friends Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron.
• His recollections of these and other friends such as Charles James Fox are key
sources for information about London artistic and literary life, with which he was
intimate, and which he used his wealth to support.
• In his own lifetime, his poetry was widely admired. On Wordsworth’s death, in 1850,
Rogers was offered the laureateship, which he refused.
• Rogers attained eminence with the publication of his popular discursive poem The
Pleasures of Memory (1792).
• The poet is now best remembered for his topographical poem, Italy, which It was at
first a failure, but Rogers was determined to make it a success. He enlarged and
revised the poem, and commissioned illustrations from J.M.W. Turner, Thomas
Stothard and Samuel Prout. These were engraved on steel in the sumptuous edition
of 1830. The book then proved a great success, the poem in its illustrated edition
of 1830 influenced Ruskinʼs writing and ideas.
• In the nineteenth century, Rogers was admired for other poetry, as well, especially
his 1792 poem, The Pleasures of Memory. He was also famous as a conversationalist
and as a patron of artists and other writers.
• He was a Regency “man of taste” who survived into an increasingly earnest
generation. Rogersʼs townhouse in St. James Place, London, where he
hosted gatherings of artists and writers at his famous breakfasts and dinners, was a
 palace of art. The collection inside Rogersʼs museum‐like residence ranged from
Greek and Roman antiquities, to Old Masters, to eighteenth‐ and
nineteenth‐century British art, to curious objects of virtue. The library was
significant for manuscripts, prints, and drawings.

3. Maria Edgeworth
• Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) was a prolific Anglo-Irish novelist of adults' and
children's literature.
• She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant
figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe.
• Encouraged by her father, Maria began her writing in the common sitting room,
where the 21 other children in the family provided material and audience for her
stories. She published them in 1796 as The Parent’s Assistant. Even the intrusive
moralizing, attributed to her father’s editing, does not wholly suppress their vitality,
and the children who appear in them, especially the impetuous Rosamond, are the
first real children in English literature since Shakespeare.
• Her first novel, Castle Rackrent (1800), written without her father’s interference,
reveals her gift for social observation, character sketch, and authentic dialogue and
is free from lengthy lecturing. its influence was enormous; Sir Walter
Scott acknowledged his debt to Edgeworth in writing Waverley.
• Castle Rackrent, is a short novel and is often regarded as the first true historical
novel and the first true regional novel in English. It is also widely regarded as the first
family saga, and the first novel to use the device of a narrator who is both unreliable
and an observer of, rather than a player in, the actions he chronicles. The work
satirizes the Irish landlords of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
• It tells the story of four generations of Rackrent heirs through their steward, Thady
Quirk. Their sequential mismanagement of the estate is resolved through the
machinations—and to the benefit—of the narrator's astute son, Jason Quirk.

4. Sydney Smith
• Sydney Smith (1771–1845) was an English wit, writer, and Anglican cleric.
• His success as a preacher was such that there was often not standing-room in
Berkeley Chapel, Mayfair, where he was morning preacher.
• In 1800, Smith published his first book, Six Sermons, preached in Charlotte Street
Chapel, Edinburgh
• He lectured on moral philosophy at the Royal Institution for three seasons, from
1804 to 1806; and treated his subject with such vigour and liveliness that the London
world crowded to Albemarle Street to hear him.
• His views were seen as radical but are now thought of as progressive and far-
sighted, being in favour of the education of women, the abolition of slavery and the
teaching of practical subjects rather than the classics.
• His lectures were original and entertaining, but he threw them in the fire when they
had served their purpose—providing the money for furnishing his house. His wife
rescued the charred manuscripts and published them in 1849 as Elementary
Sketches of Moral Philosophy.
• Smith's reputation among his contemporaries as a humourist and wit grew to such
an extent that a number of the observations which are now attributed to him may
be of doubtful provenance.
• No English writer's opinions on early American literature had more impact than
Smith's. He referred to himself as a "sincere friend of America," but this sentiment is
both supported and denied by his many publications.

5. Francis Jeffrey
• Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) was a Scottish judge and as a stern but
judicious critic of the writers of his day best known as the editor of The Edinburgh
Review, a quarterly that was the preeminent organ of British political and literary
criticism in the early 19th century.
• Francis Jeffrey was educated at the High School in Edinburgh and the universites of
Glasgow and Oxford.
• He was editor from 1803 to 1829 and also a contributor, most famously as the
literary critic who failed to appreciate the romantic sensibility of poets like
Wordsworth or Byron. His personal bias against Romanticism was evident in his
sarcastic critical attacks on William Wordsworth, the other Lake poets, and Lord
Byron.
• He was described by Lord Cockburn as “one of the greatest British critics”.
• His public career improved when the Whigs came to power. He was elected Member
of Parliament for Perth and later Edinburgh, appointed Lord Advocate in 1830 and
was also one of the senators of the College of Justice.
•

6. Thomas Campbell
• Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) was a Scottish poet Known for his sentimental
poems and patriotic war songs.
• Ranked higher by Lord Byron and Francis Jeffrey than contemporaries such as
Wordsworth and Coleridge, Campbell was a poet of considerable standing in the
early part of the 19th century. This standing was to decline even in his own life time,
however, and – barring a brief reevaluation in the mid 20th century – he has
become something of a minor figure in the canon.
• In 1799 he wrote The Pleasures of Hope, a traditional 18th-century survey in heroic
couplets of human affairs. It went through four editions within a year.
 • He also produced several stirring patriotic war songs—“Ye Mariners of England,”
“The Soldier’s Dream,” “Hohenlinden,” and, in 1801, “The Battle of the Baltic.”
• With others he launched a movement in 1825 to found the University of London,
for students excluded from Oxford or Cambridge by religious tests or lack of funds.

7. James Henry Leigh Hunt

• James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784–1859), best known as Leigh Hunt, was an
English critic, essayist and poet and a central figure of the Romantic movement in
England.
• Leigh Hunt was educated at Christ's Hospital in London from 1791 to 1799, a period
that Hunt described in his autobiography. One of the boarding houses at Christ's
Hospital is named after Hunt.
• As a boy, Hunt was an admirer of Thomas Gray and William Collins, writing many
verses in imitation of them. He was also a friend and supporter of the poets Percy
Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.
• He produced a large body of poetry in a variety of forms: narrative poems, satires,
poetic dramas, odes, epistles, sonnets, short lyrics, and translations from Greek,
Roman, Italian, and French poems. His vivid descriptions and lyrical quality are
noteworthy, as is his keen delight in nature, and he is a master of mood and
atmosphere.
• Hunt's first poems were published in 1801 under the title of Juvenilia, introducing
him into British literary and theatrical society. He began to write for the newspapers
and published in 1807 a volume of theatre criticism, and a series of Classic Tales with
critical essays on the authors.
• Hunt’s poems, of which “Abou Ben Adhem” and his rondeau “Jenny Kissed Me”
(both first published in 1838) are probably the best known, reflect his knowledge of
French and Italian versification.
• His defense of Keats’s work in the Examiner (June 1817) as “poetry for its own sake”
was an important anticipation of the views of the Aesthetic movement.

8. John Gibson Lockhart

• John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) was a Scottish critic, novelist and biographer of the
19th century.
• He studied at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford.
• He is best known as the author of the seminal, and much-admired, seven-volume
biography of his father-in-law Sir Walter Scott: Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott,
Bart. It was originally criticized for revealing Scott’s faults, but it is now considered an
idealized portrait that shows Scott’s success in brilliant color and suggests his flaws with
subtle wit.
• He was one of the main contributors to Edinburgh Monthly Magazine (later Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine) from the time of its founding in 1817.
• He coauthored the articles “Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript,” which
lampooned Scottish celebrities in a parody of Old Testament style, and “On the Cockney
School of Poetry,” the first of a series of attacks on the English poets John Keats and
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
• Lockhart’s other works include Adam Blair (1822), a novel about a clergyman’s
surrender to sexual temptation.

9. Thomas Hood
• An editor, publisher, poet, and humorist, Thomas Hood was born in London.
• Hood wrote regularly for The London Magazine, Athenaeum, and Punch.
• He also published a magazine called Hood’s Own, or, Laughter from Year to Year and
released the Comic Annual series.
• As a member of the London literary scene, he was familiar with Hartley Coleridge,
Thomas De Quincy, William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, and William Wordsworth.
• William Michael Rossetti in 1903 called him "the finest English poet" between the
generations of Shelley and Tennyson.
• He was famous for his punning, which appears at times to be almost a reflex action,
serving as a defense against painful emotion.
• His humanitarian verses, such as “The Song of the Shirt” (1843), served as models for a
whole school of social-protest poets, not only in Britain and the United States but in
Germany and Russia, where he was widely translated.
• Of his later poems, “The Song of the Shirt,” “The Lay of the Labourer” (1844), and “The
Bridge of Sighs” (1844) are moving protests against social evils of the day—sweated
labour, unemployment, and the double sexual standard.

10. John Wilson

• Now an undeservedly neglected figure, John Wilson (1785-1854) was one of the most
important magazinists and literary critics of the Romantic period. Writing mainly under
the pseudonym of “Christopher North”, he was a mainstay of Blackwood's Edinburgh
Magazine for which he produced numerous articles on various subjects, short stories,
perceptive reviews, and his series Noctes Ambrosianae.
• He was professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1820–1851.
• He was inspired by Oxford and in much of his later work, notably in the essay called "Old
North and Young North", expresses his love for it.
• Wilson was also a poet and writer of fiction whose greatest popular success came with
his novels of rural Scottish life.
• Charismatic and brilliant, but emotionally volatile and capable of lashing out in print,
Wilson had long (and sometimes troubled) associations with some of the major writers
 of his day, most notably William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert
Southey and Thomas de Quincey.
• Wilson had contributed to Blackwood's prose tales and sketches, and novels, some of
which were afterwards published separately in Lights and Shadows of Scottish
Life (1822), The Trials of Margaret Lindsay (1823) and The Foresters (1825); later
appeared essays on Edmund Spenser, Homer and all sorts of modern subjects and
authors.
 1. William Langland: Piers Plowman
❖ William Langland, whose dates of birth and death are unknown, appears to have published Piers
Plowman in three successive versions in the 1370s and 1380s. The poem survives in more than sixty
complete manuscripts and manuscript fragments and in two sixteenth-century print editions, making it a
late medieval best seller. Piers Plowman is composed in alliterative meter, the verse form of Beowulf, Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight, and roughly 300 other medieval English poems.
❖ The poem describes a series of wonderful dreams the poet-speaker has dreamed. Through these
dreams, we see a picture of life in the feudal England.
▪ In the first dream, the author sees before him a fair field full of people of all classes. The
working people are working hard to plough and sow, but the idlers waste their labour fruit.
In his dream, the speaker also notices a group of rats rush upon the scene. They discuss how
to get rid of a court cat. One rat proposes that their enemy should be killed. But a mouse
says that, even if the cat is killed, another will come in its place. So at last, all of the rats say:
“Let that Cat Be.” By using the fable story of the rats, the author exposes the ugly features
of the ruling class and sums up the political situation of the time.
▪ In the next dream, the speaker finds Lady Bribery, who is the incarnation of the corruption
of the ruling class, and the enemy of Truth, here the poet tries to lash the corruption of the
ruling class and the church with the whip of a satirist. And he also describes the hard life of
the poor peasants and shows sympathy to them.
▪ The next part of the poem describes the pilgrimage of the people in search for Truth.

2. Spenser: Amoretti
❖ Amoretti is a sonnet cycle written by Edmund Spenser in the 16th century. The cycle describes his courtship
and eventual marriage to Elizabeth Boyle.
▪ The term “amoretti” is literally defined as “little loves” or “little cupids.”
▪ Spenser’s sonnets deal largely with the idea of love. Up until Sonnet 67, the sonnets primarily
focus on the frustration of unreturned romantic desires. On the other hand, the sonnets that
follow Sonnet 67 celebrates the happiness of love shared between two people (Spenser and
Elizabeth), as well as celebrating divine love. The frustration of unrequited love is a common
theme in the Elizabethan sonnets; however, the celebration of successful love is largely a
deviation from the typical themes. In addition, Spenser focuses on courtship and the power
dynamic in successful relationships. In particular, he portrays that women want to have the
authority in a romantic relationship, echoing Geoffrey Chaucer’s central theme in “The Wife of
Bath” from The Canterbury Tales. Furthermore, he discusses true beauty and the ways in
which writing poetry can immortalize things that otherwise cannot be immortalized, such as
people. Finally, Spenser’s poetry often references God and religion, celebrating the theme of
divine love in the second half of the sequence.

3. Milton: ParadiseLost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem (12 books, totalling more than 10,500 lines) written in blank verse,
telling the biblical tale of the Fall of Mankind – the moment when Adam and Eve were tempted by
Satan to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and God banished them from the
Garden of Eden forever.

• Paradise Lost recreates the biblical story of the fall of man, starting with the first fall, that of a
group of rebel angels in Heaven. Satan, one of God’s most cherished and powerful angels, grows
 angry when God creates the Son and proclaims that Son as leader. Satan asserts his own
authority and power when he organizes a group of rebel angels against God, leading to the
Angelic War, which ends in no deaths but much pain. The Son defeats the rebels, who are cast
into Hell. After this civil war, God creates the first man, Adam. Lonely, Adam requests a
companion, and so God makes Eve from Adam’s flesh. Eve is beautiful, intelligent, and in love
with Adam; she is also curious and hungry for knowledge. Adam and Eve begin in a close
relationship with God. They live in Paradise, in the Garden of Eden. God gives them the power to
rule over all creation with only one command: They cannot eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
God warns that if they eat from the tree, they will die.
Meanwhile, in Hell, Satan concocts a plan to destroy man in an act of revenge. He journeys to
Earth, tricking the angel Uriel into showing him where man lives. After finding Adam and Eve in
Paradise, he grows jealous of them, for they have God’s favor. He overhears Adam and Eve
talking about the forbidden fruit. He disguises himself as a serpent, cunning and deceptive. He
tricks Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. Adam learns of Eve’s sin and knows that she must
die. He chooses to eat the forbidden fruit, too, feeling bound to Eve because they are from the
same flesh. Adam and Eve both know they have sinned. They fall asleep and have terrible
nightmares. When they awake, they both feel guilt and shame for disobeying God. On bended
knee, they beg God for forgiveness. With mankind fallen, Satan returns to Hell to celebrate his
triumph. As soon as he finishes his victory speech, he and all his followers turn into snakes
without limbs or the ability to speak. God sends the Archangel Michael to escort Adam and Eve
from Paradise. Before expelling them, Michael shows Adam the future—the events resulting
from the original sin. The vision shows everything that will happen to mankind, tracing events
from Cain and Abel up to the redemption of sin through Jesus Christ. With a mixture of
sadness and hope, Adam and Eve leave Paradise.

4. Andrew Marvell: The Garden

‘The Garden’ by Andrew Marvell can be regarded as a unique poem, blending metaphysical concepts and
allusions, romanticism as well as classicism. The poet mocks the incessant labors of men for something so
insignificant; recognition in the man-made world. Unaware of the garland of tranquility that nature weaves
for the mortal, the man chases materialistic pleasure. Virtues like Quietness and Innocence are absent among
men but finds themselves embedded in nature. Only in mother Nature can we enjoy the delicacies of solitude,
not in Society. To the poet, green is a symbolism of amatory, of freshness and tranquility. Men are
busy admiring the beauty of maiden, but they fail to notice the enigmatic beauty of nature.
Nature in its purest form is a heavenly bliss with the ripe apples and melons rolling on the ground and the
grapevine crushing its juices on the poet’s mouth. It is where the soul frees itself from bodily attachment and,
like a bird, sings on the boughs.
The poet contemplates the Garden and says that no other company was needed for enjoying this heavenly
bliss. Rather, it would be ‘double paradise’ if the poet can relish this Paradise in solitude.
In the end, the poet praises the Almighty, in the form of a ‘skillful gardener,’ as he created this garden of
elements like herbs & flowers that act like a sundial and bees who work to compute time.

5. Christopher Marlowe: Doctor Faustus

It is an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlowe. It was performed for the first time in 1604. Doctor Faustus, a well-
respected German scholar. He becomes dissatisfied with the limits of traditional forms of knowledge i.e. logic, medicine,
law, and religion. Thus, he decides to learn to practice magic. His friends namely Valdes and Cornelius instruct him in
the black arts. Hence, he starts his new career as a magician by summoning up Mephastophilis, a devil.
Mephastophilis warns Faustus of the horrors of hell. However, Faustus ignores his warnings.
He tells the devil to return to his master, Lucifer, with an offer of Faustus’s soul in exchange for a service of
twenty-four years from Mephastophilis on Earth. Meanwhile, Wagner, Faustus’s servant, has learned up some
magical ability. He uses it to press a clown named Robin into his service.
Mephastophilis returns to Faustus with the message that Lucifer has accepted Faustus’s offer. Faustus
experiences some misgivings and wonders that he should repent and save his soul; in the end, although, he agrees
to the deal and signs it with his blood. On doing so, the words “Homo fuge,” Latin for “O man, fly,” appear branded
on his arm.
Faustus again has second thoughts. However, Mephastophilis bestows rich gifts on him and gives him a book of
spells to learn. Later, Mephastophilis answers the questions asked by him about the nature of the world.
However, he refuses to answer only when Faustus asks him about the creation of the universe.
This refusal prompts yet another spell of misgivings in Faustus. However, Mephastophilis and Lucifer bring in
personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins to prance about in front of Faustus. Then, he is impressed enough to
settle down his doubts.
Having armed with his new powers and attended by Mephastophilis, Faustus starts traveling. He goes to the
pope’s court in Rome, makes himself invisible, and starts playing a chain of tricks. He disrupts the pope’s banquet
by his activities of stealing food and boxing the pope’s ears.
After this incident in dr Faustus summary, he travels through the courts of Europe. He spreads his fame wherever
he goes. Eventually, Charles V (the enemy of the pope), the German Emperor, invited him to his court. He asks
Faustus to allow him to see Alexander the Great, the famed fourth-century b.c. Macedonian king and conqueror.
Faustus conjures up an image of Alexander. Thus, Charles is suitably impressed. A knight mocks at Faustus’s
powers, and Faustus chastises him. He makes antlers develop from his head. The knight was angry and vows
revenge.
Meanwhile, Robin, Wagner’s clown, has applied up some magic on his own. He, along with his fellow, Rafe, goes
through a number of comic misadventures. At one point, he manages to summon Mephastophilis when he
threatens to turn Robin and Rafe into animals to punish them for their foolishness.
Faustus then carries on with his travels. He plays a trick on a horse-courser along the way. Faustus sells him a
horse which turns into a heap of straw when ridden into a river.
Then, Faustus is invited to the court of the Duke of Vanholt, where he performs various feats. He founds horse-
courser, along with Robin, a man named Dick, and various others who became victim to Faustus’s trickery.
However, Faustus casts spells on them and sends them on their way. This act amuses the duke and duchess.
However, the twenty-four years of his deal with Lucifer come to a close, Faustus begins to fear his approaching
death. He has Mephastophilis call up Helen of Troy, the well-known splendor from the ancient world.
He uses her presence to impress a group of scholars. An old man urges Faustus to repent; however, Faustus
drives him away. Faustus summons Helen again and exclaims rapturously about her magnificence.
But a very short period was left for his death. Faustus tells the scholars about his pact, and they are horror-
stricken. They resolve to pray for him. On the final night before the ending of the twenty-four years, Faustus was
full of fear and remorse.
He begs for mercy, but that was too late. At midnight, a host of devils appear and takes his soul off to hell. In the
morning, the scholars find Faustus’s limbs. They decide to conduct a funeral for him.

6. John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi

The Duchess of Malfi, five-act tragedy by English dramatist John Webster, performed 1613/14 and
published in 1623. The Duchess of Malfi tells the story of the spirited duchess and her love for her
trustworthy steward Antonio. They marry secretly, despite the opposition of her two brothers,
Ferdinand (the Duke of Calabria) and the Cardinal. Although she bears three children, she refuses to
name the father. Eventually betrayed by Bosola, a spy, the duchess and her family flee but are
intercepted; Antonio and the oldest child, a boy, escape. Ferdinand orders Bosola to strangle the
duchess, her two younger children, and her maid and then goes mad with guilt. In typical fashion
for revenge tragedy, the final act is one of carnage. All are killed except for the eldest son of the
duchess and Antonio, who is named ruler of Malfi. Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is often regarded as
the last great tragedy of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, second only to William Shakespeare’s.
Webster’s style is reliant on dense symbolic imagery. The duchess, by far the strongest character in
 the play, is a passionate noble woman who rejects her brothers’ demands for the sake of love.
Unbroken by cruel treatment, she proclaims before her death, “I am Duchess of Malfi still.”

7. Machivelli: The Prince

The Prince, political treatise by Niccolò Machiavelli, written in 1513. A short treatise on how to
acquire power, create a state, and keep it, The Prince represents Machiavelli’s effort to provide a guide for
political action based on the lessons of history and his own experience as a foreign secretary in Florence. His
belief that politics has its own rules so shocked his readers that the adjectival form of his
surname, Machiavellian, came to be used as a synonym for political maneuvers marked by cunning, duplicity,
or bad faith. Machiavelli establishes that The Prince focuses on new princedoms, meaning royalty who just
came into power or royalty who acquired new territory. He argues that new rulers have their strength tested
to see whether they can defend themselves and their territory or whether they need to rely on others, such as
allies, for protection.
Machiavelli argues that a ruler's main concern should be perfecting their military and war strategy. He
believes these skills are necessary to acquire territory and keep what the ruler has gained. Machiavelli also
argues that a ruler should not be too generous or merciful toward his subjects; otherwise, the subjects will
become greedy and unappreciative over time. He even adds that rulers should be able sometimes be evil
because they will come into contact with other evil people and will have to think like them to make deals with
them and to succeed politically or in war. Machiavelli believes rulers should exercise honesty and keep their
promises only when it suits their purposes. Machiavelli ultimately argues that rulers should bend a variety of
common virtues to keep and/or expand their territory.
Machiavelli also warns rulers against hatred from their subjects, however. Although he encourages rules to
commit a number of morally questionable actions, he believes rulers have to avoid being legitimately hated
by their subjects to maintain their respect. Machiavelli advises that the staff's character will also judge rulers
and that when two other states are at war, it is usually better to choose a side than to remain neutral.

8. Ben Jonson: The Silent Women

the silent women is the comedy written by one of the famous renaissance play Wright Ben Jonson. The play
was first performed by Blackfrairs Children, a group of boy players in 1609. Ben Jonson considered the first
performance of the play as a failure, however later it was championed by the writers like John Dryden and
others. it was also revived after restoration and the mention of this play in the diary of Samuel Pepys makes it
the first play to be performed after the reopening of the theaters after the restoration of King Charles II, on
July 06, 1660.

SUMMARY

The play is staged in London, the play encompasses the story in which a wealthy old man Morose, wants to
disinherit his nephew Dauphine. Morose, has a natural hatred for noise. He thinks that he will marry
with Epicene and then disinherit Dauphine. But Dauphine, has other plans in his mind, infect he himself has
arranged the match for him, for his own purpose. Morose thinks that Epicene is a quite woman. As the plans
of marriage are carried out, True-wit the friend of Dauphine makes interference, he is not happy with the
marriage; however his interference does not prove fruitful the couple is finally married.

Morose soon regrets his wedding day, as his house is invaded by a noisy celebration that
comprises Dauphine, True-wit, and Clerimont; a bear warden named Otter and his wife; two stupid
knights, La Foole and Daw; and an assortment of "collegiate’s," vain and scheming women with intellectual
pretensions. Worst for Morose, Epicene quickly reveals herself as a loud, nagging mate. Epicene is in
complete contrast to what Morose thought her to be. Now Morose wants to give divorce to the Epicene. He
 hiers two Lawyers, but they the men of Dauphine. A trial is carried out in which no substantial proofs are
found on the divorce can be given. The situation becomes tense for the Morose. Finally it is, Dauphine, who
comes to the rescue of Morose and says that he will provide the reasons for divorce. But Dauphine will do
all this on a financial deal with Morose. Since Morose can no more bear his wife Epicene, he agrees with what
Dauphine says. After the agreement is made Dauphine strips off the costume of Epicene, and it is revealed
that Epicene was none but a boy in costume.
Morose is dismissed harshly, and the other ludicrous characters are discomfited by this revelation; Daw and
Foole, for instance, had claimed to have slept with Epicene.
 1. Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human
Soul
• A collection of engraved poems set mainly in England during the late eighteenth century,
but also in timeless mythical places; Songs of Innocence was printed in 1789 and
combined with Songs of Experience in 1794.
• Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a brief sketch of man's life journey
from his childhood to old age. Though man is fallen and destined to live a life of
mortality, he is blessed enough to have visions of his glorious days. But these moments
are fleeting and man's ability to experience them lasts only for a short time. Later, when
he enters the life of experience he forgets them all and adheres to the modes and
fashions of the world.
• In his childhood man feels all the tender and soft virtues such as sympathy, love and
kindness. But when he turns mature there is a change in his outlook. He experiences
wrath, energy, sexual desire as a consequence of which he begins to behave as a
mature man. Cruelty, reason and hypocrisy seize his mind and he is moulded into a new
form. In this stage of life man is influenced by the negative aspects of the conventional
religion which he follows blindly.
• To show the extent of man's degeneration Blake has written some poems in Songs of
Experience as poignant contrasts to other poems which appear in Songs of Innocence.

2. James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions

of a Justified Sinner
• An unclassifiable tale of mystery, murder, religious fanaticism, folklore, horror, and
fantasy, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824,
was for many years forgotten. Scottish writer James Hogg, a self-educated shepherd
once popular for his poetry and magazine articles, published the novel anonymously,
correctly assuming that its strange, experimental style and horrific subject matter would
not be appreciated by the general public. It was only in the late 1940s that French writer
André Gide acclaimed it as a masterpiece.
• James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) is a
subtle study of religious mania and split personality.
• published anonymously in 1824.
• The novel is divided into three sections, giving the reader several ways of understanding
the story and the psychology of the madman. The first section is a factual summary of
events as they exist in local tradition and folklore. The second section is the confessions
of the fanatical Robert Wringhim. The short final section is the unearthing of Wringhim’s
remains by a group of writers and the discovery of the shocking confessions that were
 buried with him. In this section, James Hogg, attempting in an offhand way to distance
himself from the bizarre story he created, actually inserts himself as a character.

3. Walter Scott’s The Lay of the Last Minstrel

• The poem “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” was composed by Sir Walter Scott. He was a
famous Scottish historical poet, novelist, playwright and biographer.
• The Lay of the Last Minstrel, long narrative poem in six cantos by Sir Walter Scott,
published in 1805. It was the author’s first original poetic romance, and it established his
reputation.
• Scott based The Lay of the Last Minstrel on the old Scottish Border legend of the goblin
Gilpin Horner. The poem is structured as a frame story.
• Its narrator, who is living during the late 17th century, is the last of the ancient line of
minstrels. He tells the tale of a 16th-century feud between Lady Buccleuch and Lord
Cranstoun, who loves the lady’s daughter. The minstrel’s “lay”—the term refers to a
variety of poetic forms, most of them medieval—is full of magical and folk elements and
of knightly combat between the English army and Scottish clans. It also includes a
number of ballads.
• The message of the poem is that if anyone who is selfish and unpatriotic by nature, will
never able to get the real reputation and respect in his country fellows' hearts. Though
he may be wealthy, rich powerful and had dominant personality in the society he
neither will be paid respect from the core of the heart of people after his death nor in
his lifetime.

4. Robert Southey’s Joan of Arc

• Joan of Arc is a 1796 epic poem composed by Robert Southey.
• The idea for the story came from a discussion between Southey and Grosvenor Bedford,
when Southey realised that the story would be suitable for an epic.
• The subject further appealed to Southey because the events of the French Revolution were
concurrent to the writing of the poem and would serve as a parallel to current events.
• The poem is divided into two-halves with the first describing Joan's quest to meet Charles,
the Dauphin of France. Eventually, she is capable of gaining the Dauphin's support and
begins to lead the French military. The secondary half describes the French defeat of the
British army at Orléans. After many victories, the poem ends with Charles crowned King of
France.
• Joan of Arc serves as a way for Southey to express his views on history and on politics;
these include his republican ideals, his claims that political tyranny was a common element
in Europe, and his opposition to Christian practices that he thought were superstitious.
• Critics gave the work mixed reviews, with some emphasising the quality of the images and
themes of the poem. However, others believed that the poem lacked merit and some
 believed that the subject matter was inappropriate to the time. Many critics felt that Southey
rushed in composing the work and did not devote enough time to it.

5. Walter Savage Landor’s Imaginary Conversations

• Imaginary Conversations is Walter Savage Landor's most celebrated prose work.
• The Imaginary Conversations were begun when Landor was living in Florence and were
initially published as they were completed between 1824-9, by which time they filled
three volumes.
• The dialogues, not yet divided into categories, were initially given the composite
title Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen.
• With their success Landor continued to write more, as well as to polish and add to
those already published.
• Some appeared first in literary reviews, as for example the conversation between
"Southey and Porson" on William Wordsworth's poetry in 1823, predating the first
published series of conversations in the following year.
• Various supplemented editions followed each other until there were five volumes
containing nearly 150 conversations.
• They were published over a period of thirty years from 1824. Many are historical.
• The conversations were in the tradition of dialogues with the dead, a genre begun in
Classical times that had a popular European revival in the 17th century and after. Their
subjects range over philosophical, political and moral themes, and are designed to give a
dramatic sense of the contrasting personalities and attitudes involved.

6. Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk: A Romance

• The Monk: A Romance is a Gothic novel by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1796.
• The Monk (1796) marked a turning point in the history of Gothic literature. With its
emphasis firmly on the horrific and the shocking, the book moved Gothic away from the
gentle terrors of earlier authors such as Horace Walpole and, instead, confronted
readers with an onslaught of horror in the form of spectral bleeding nuns, mob violence,
murder, sorcery and incest.
• Unsurprisingly the book met with outrage and condemnation from critics.
• The story’s violence and sexual content made it one of the era’s best-selling and most
influential novels.
• With its twin themes of erotic obsession and the corrupting influence of power, The
Monk deals with important issues and contains moments of impressive psychological
insight. At heart, however, it remains a morality tale about one man’s fall from grace
through greed, pride and lust.
• The novel is the story of a monk, Ambrosio, who is initiated into a life of depravity by
Matilda, a woman who has disguised herself as a man to gain entrance to
 the monastery. Ambrosio eventually sells his soul to the devil to avoid being tortured by
the Spanish Inquisition, but the devil throws him from a precipice to his death on the
rocks below.
• The book differed from other Gothic novels of the time because it concentrated on the
sensational and the horrible rather than on romance and because it did not attempt to
explain the supernatural events of the plot.

7. Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies

• Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852) was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist
celebrated for his Irish Melodies.
• Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies are his best-known works. These 124 Irish tunes, arranged
for voice and piano with newly-minted lyrics by Moore, were published in ten numbers
between 1808 and 1834.
• Following a request by the publishers James and William Power, he wrote lyrics to a series
of Irish tunes.
• The principal source for the tunes was Edward Bunting's A General Collection of the Ancient
Irish Music (1797) to which Moore had been introduced at Trinity by Edward Hudson.
• The Melodies was published in ten volumes, together with a supplement, over 26 years
between 1808 and 1834.
• The musical arrangements of the last volumes, following Stevenson's death in 1833, were
by Henry Bishop.
• The Melodies were an immediate success, "The Last Rose of Summer", "The Minstrel Boy",
"Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms" and "Oft in the Stilly Night" becoming
immensely popular.
• There were parodies in England, but translations into German, Italian, Hungarian, Czech,
and French, and settings by Hector Berlioz guaranteed a large European audience. In the
United States, "The Last Rose of Summer" alone sold more than a million copies.
• Byron said he knew them all "by rote and by heart"; setting them above epics and Moore
above all other poets for his "peculiarity of talent, or rather talents, – poetry, music, voice, all
his own.

8. Byron’s English Bards, And Scotch Reviewers

• George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (1788–1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was
an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic
movement and has been regarded as among the greatest of English poets.
• English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, satire in verse by Lord Byron, first published
anonymously in 1809.
• It is Byron’s first major work after his volume of juvenilia Hours of Idleness.
• The poem was written in response to the adverse criticism that The Edinburgh
Review had given Hours of Idleness (1807), Byron’s first published volume of poetry.
• In English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Byron used heroic couplets in imitation
of Alexander Pope’s The Dunciad to attack the reigning poets of Romanticism,
 including William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Francis Jeffrey, the
editor of The Edinburgh Review.
• He praised instead such Neoclassical poets as Pope and John Dryden.
• The poem went through several editions, but Byron finally suppressed the 5th edition in
1812 because he had come to regret his attitude toward those he had attacked.

9. De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-

Eater
• Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) is an autobiographical account written
by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum addiction and its effect on his life.
• The Confessions was "the first major work De Quincey published and the one that won
him fame almost overnight"
• It was first published in The London Magazine in two parts in 1821, then as a book, with
an appendix, in 1822.
• The avowed purpose of the first version of the Confessions was to warn the reader of
the dangers of opium, and it combined the interest of a journalistic exposé of a social
evil, told from an addict’s point of view, with a somewhat contradictory and seductive
picture of the subjective pleasures of drug addiction.
• The book begins with an autobiographical account of the author’s addiction. It then
describes in effective detail the euphoric and highly symbolic reveries that he
experienced under the drug’s influence and recounts the horrible nightmares that
continued use of the drug eventually produced. The highly poetic and imaginative prose
of the Confessions makes it one of the enduring stylistic masterpieces of English
literature.
• Athough De Quincey ends his narrative at a point at which he is drug-free, he remained
an opium addict for the rest of his life.

10. John William Polidori’s The Vampyre

• "The Vampyre" is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William
Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary
Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley.
• The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The
Vampyre is often viewed as the progenitor of the romantic vampire
genre of fantasy fiction.
• "The Vampyre" was first published on 1 April 1819 with the false attribution "A Tale
by Lord Byron"
• The work is described by Christopher Frayling as "the first story successfully to fuse the
disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre.”
• The story was an immediate popular success, partly because of the Byron attribution
and partly because it exploited the gothic horror predilections of the public. Polidori
transformed the vampire from a character in folklore into the form that is recognized
today—an aristocratic fiend who preys among high society.
• The story deals with aristocratic seduction and murder, the connection between a
depraved young aristocrat and vampirism, the moral collapse both of the woman being
seduced and her brother, and the inability of her family to protect her.

• Aubrey meets the mysterious Lord Ruthven at a social event when he comes to
London. After briefly getting to know Ruthven, Aubrey agrees to go travelling
around Europe with him, but leaves him shortly after they reach Rome when he
learns that Ruthven seduced the daughter of a mutual acquaintance. Alone, he
travels to Greece where he falls in love with an innkeeper's daughter, Ianthe. She
tells him about the legends of the vampire, which are very popular in the area.
This romance is short-lived as Ianthe is unfortunately killed, found with her throat
torn open. The whole town believes it to be the work of the evil vampire. Aubrey
does not make the connection that this coincidentally happens shortly after Lord
Ruthven comes to the area. Aubrey makes up with him and rejoins him in his
travels, which becomes his undoing. The pair are attacked by bandits on the road
and Ruthven is mortally wounded. On his deathbed, Ruthven makes Aubrey
swear an oath that he will not speak of Ruthven or his death for a year and a day,
and once Aubrey agrees, Lord Ruthven dies laughing.
Aubrey returns to London and is amazed when Ruthven appears shortly
thereafter, alive and well and living under a new identity. Ruthven reminds
Aubrey of his oath and then begins to seduce Aubrey's sister. Helpless to protect
his sister, Aubrey has a nervous breakdown. Upon recovering, Aubrey learns that
Ruthven is engaged to his sister, and they are due to be married on the day his
oath will end. He writes a letter to his sister explaining everything in case
something happens to him before he can warn her in person. Aubrey does in fact
die, and his letter does not arrive in time. Ruthven marries Aubrey's sister, and
kills her on their wedding night, found drained of blood with Ruthven long gone
into the night.