Excerpt from A First View of English and American Literature This volume is based upon the authors' more advanced H istory of English Literature. The aim has been to pre serve those features of the previous book Which have most commended themselves to high-school and academy teach ers, to remove everything Which they have found too de tailed or too difiicult for their students, and to add Whatever was suggested by their friendly criticism as likely to in crease the value of the book in class-room practice. The literary comment has been simplified, partly by omission, partly by the substitution of explicit statement in the place of What was before only suggested. The number of authors treated has been much reduced, and the attention of the student centred exclusively on a few great representative figures. More space has been given to biography and de scriptive sketches, especially in the later periods. Each main epoch has been prefaced by a full historical introduction, and summarized in the form of a review-commentary and questions, together with tabular views. Suggestions con cerning the best available texts, and the best biographical and critical aids to study, are given at the close of each chapter. A number of portraits are added, taken in each case from an authentic source. For purposes of fuller refer ence, some authors not treated in the text are included in the tabular views. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.