General works on the Restoration and Eighteeth Century

Notes: All of these are intended for "general readers" or students (as opposed to specialist scholars and critics), but they vary widely in terms of how much they presume their readers already know. In fact, almost all of them will presume you know more than you actually do; the trick is to use them rather than to read them through. Size them up by looking at the table of contents and the introduction; look for things that interest you (not necessarily connected with the nonfiction prose of the period). Don't be easily daunted; remember, you can learn something from almost any text. On the other hand, don't feel that once you've picked a book up you're stuck with it: if, after a while -- 10 or 15 minutes -- it's pretty clear that the book isn't going to be of any use to you, simply find another.

Notice the dates of the books, too. Ideas about the period and what's interesting in it have changed. Older isn't necessarily worse, but it's likely to be different.

Note: all of these books are intended for upper-level undergraduate classes in the literature of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century; none is focused on nonfiction, and some will hardly mention it at all. What's relevant to us, at this point, is likely to be the introductory material -- the presentation of historical and literary background, information on authors, etc. If they deal with nonfiction specifically, of course that's useful; but what they have to say about the period and the other literature is more likely to be useful right now.

*Bredvold, Louis I., et al., eds. Eighteenth Century Poetry and Prose. New York: Ronald Press, 1939. [PR1134 .B7]

*DeMaria, Robert, ed. British Literature, 1640-1789: An Anthology. Oxford; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996. [PR1134 .B74 1996]

*DeMaria, Robert, ed. British Literature, 1640-1789: An Anthology. Second Edition. Oxford; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2001.

Gay, Peter, comp. The Enlightenment: A Comprehensive Anthology. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973. [B802 .G29] [Andréa Peters]

Grigson, Geoffrey, comp. Before the Romantics: An Anthology Of the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Salamander Press, 1984. [PR1136 .B43 1984][Jeremy Fowler]

Kermode, Frank, comp. The Oxford Anthology of English Literature. v. 3. The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. [PR1105 .K4 1973]

Pagliaro, Harold E., ed. Major English Writers of the Eighteenth Century. New York: Free Press, 1969. [PB E50B]

*Price, Martin, ed. The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. [PB E50C]

(UNBSJ) Shepard, Odell, and Paul Spencer Wood. eds. English Prose and Poetry, 1660-1800. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962. [PR1131 .S54]

Sypher, Wylie, ed. Enlightened England: An Anthology of English Literature from Dryden to Blake. Rev. ed. New York: Norton, 1962. [PR1134] .S8 1962; PB E50A [Paige Guptill]

Tillotson, Geoffrey, Paul Fussell, Jr., Marshall Waingrow and Brewster Rogerson, eds., Eighteenth-century English literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969. [PR1134 .T5]

Some general English literary histories

Barnard, Robert. A Short History of English Literature. Oxford; New York: B. Blackwell in association with Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, Norway, 1984. [PR83 .B27 1984] [Nicole DeMerchant]

Bate, Jonathan. English literature: a very short introduction. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. [PR83 .B285 2010]

Baugh, Albert Croll, ed. A literary history of England. New York : Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1948. [PR83 .B3] [Colin Belyea] [Kirsten Graham]

Blamires, Harry. A Short History of English Literature. 2nd ed. London; New York: Methuen, 1984. [PR83 .B5 1984]

Bloom, Harold. Eighteenth-century British Fiction. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.

Brooke, Stopford A. English Literature. London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd., 1901. [Matthew Pain]

Buchan, John, ed. History of English Literature. New York: Nelson, 1923. [PR85 .B8 1923]

Burgess, Anthony. English literature: a survey for students. London: Longman, 1974. [PR85 .B9 1974] [Michael Taggart]

Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature. 2nd ed. New York: Ronald Press Co., 1970. [PR83 .D29 1970] [Amber Carroll]

Davin, John Mulgan and D. M. An Introduction to English Literature. London: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1964. [Thomas Creagh]

Evans, B. Ifor. A short history of English literature. London, New York: Staples Press,1949. [PR85 .E8 1949]

Fowler, Alastair. A History of English Literature: Forms and Kinds From the Middle Ages to the Present. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. [PR83 .F65 1987]

Kaul, Suvir. Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Post Colonial Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd, 2009.

Legouis, Emile. A Short History of English Literature. Trans V. F. Boyson and J. Coulson. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1934. [PR93 .L47 1934]

Poplawski, Paul. English literature in context. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. [PR83 .E64 2008]

Quennell, Peter. A History of English Literature. Springfield, Massachusetts, G. & C. Merriam Co., 1973. [PR83 .Q4 1973] [Kale Robinson]

Saintsbury, George. A Short History of English Literature. London: Macmillan, 1964. [PR85 .S15 1964] [Paige Guptill]

Sambrook, James. The Eighteenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature; 1700-1789. London: Longman, 1986.

Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. 3rd ed., rev. R.S. Churchill. London: Cambridge University Press, 1970. [PR85 .S19 1970]

Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. [PR83 .S26 1994] [Sarah Reicker]

Sherburn, George. The Restoration and Eighteenth Century. Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc; New York, 1948. [Jenna Hamilton]

Skinner, John. An Introduction to Eighteenth-Century Fiction: Raising the Novel. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001. [Maisa Leibovitz]

Ward, A.W., Waller, A.R. The Cambridge History of English Literature (The Period Of the French Revolution). London: Cambridge University Press, 1953. [PR83 .C224 1932] [Georgia Priestley-Brown]