Sketches of English Literature, from the Fourteenth to the Present Century

Balfour's lively and accessible work surveys four centuries of English literature; it was a favourite of the Victorian bien pensant.

Zusammenfassung
Balfour's Sketches surveys the development of English literature from the fourteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth with a special focus on women writers. Her lively and accessible style ensured that the work became a favourite of educated Victorian readers. It is a classic of popular nineteenth-century literature.

Inhalt

Introduction; 1. The fourteenth century; 2. The art of printing, its professors and patrons; 3. Female education and influence after the introduction of printing; 4. The Reformation, and the literary activity of its era; 5. The Bible and its translators; 6. The Bible, its literary influence; 7. Spenser and Shakspeare, and their poetic contemporaries; 8. Minor poets between the time of Shakspeare and Milton; 9. Science and its martyrs; 10. Milton and his literary contemporaries; 11. Female writers of the seventeenth century; 12. Dryden and the rise of criticism in England; 13. Mind and matter, their students and expositors; 14. Aspects of the literature of the eighteenth century; 15. Eighteenth century (continued); 16. Female writers of the last half of the eighteenth century, and the beginning of the present; 17. Modern female poets; 18. Illustrious youthful poets; 19. Poetical controversies of the present age; 20. Literature among the people.