Contents

Preface -- List of authors -- Anglo-Saxon literature -- Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry -- Anglo-Saxon learning and prose -- After the Norman conquest -- Geoffrey of Monmouth -- Layamon's "Brut" -- The romances in rhyme -- Alliterative romances and poems -- Chaucer -- "Piers Plowman," Gower -- The successors of Chaucer -- Late mediaeval prose -- Malory -- Early Scottish literature -- Popular poetry; ballads; professional poetry -- Rise of the drama -- Wyatt and Surrey; Gascoigne; Sackville -- Prose of the Renaissance -- The Elizabethan stage and playwrights -- Other dramatists -- Elizabethan and Jacobean prose writers -- Late Elizabethan and Jacobean poets -- Late Jacobean and Caroline prose; Caroline prose -- Caroline poets -- Restoration theatre -- Augustan poetry -- Augustan prose -- Georgian poetry I -- Georgian poetry II -- Georgian prose I -- Georgian prose II -- The romantic movement -- Later Georgian novelists; magazines and essayists -- Poets after Wordsworth; general writers -- Late Victorian poets; poetic underwoods -- Latest Georgian and Victorian novelists -- Historians.