Illustrated History of English Literature. Volume Two. Ben Johnson to Samuel Johnson.

London England: Longmans, Green and Co, 1954. Hardback. Couple of small tears to top edge of D/J. Illustrations Collected by Elizabeth Williams. Covering a period of nearly two centuries - stretching from Ben Johnson's Comedy of Humours to Sheirdan's Commedy of Manners, and embracing the wit of Restoration comedy and the splendours of Milton's poetry, the beginnings of journalism and the birth of the novel. the triumphs of satire in Dryden and Pope, the varied achievements of the Metaphysicals and the Augustans, and the production of Boswell's masterpiece of biography and Gibbon's of history - this volume opens up an ever-widening prospect and gives a perspective view not only of the tall trees but also of the bushes and shrubs which abound in the seventeenth - and eighteenth-century literary scene. Contents: The Author to the Reader. Early Stuart Drama. Early Stuar Verse and Prose. Milton and Bunyan. Dryden and His Contemporaries. Book Selling and News Distribution. Defoe and Swift. The Pursuit of Urbanity: Steele to Pope. Lesser Verse and Prose 1701-25. Johnson Before Boswell. The Novel in Maturity. Eighteenth-Century Drama. Gray, Smart, and others; lesser Verse and Prose 1725-75. Boswell, Johnson, and the Club. Descriptive Notes to the Illustrations. Index. Illustrated. 261 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions etc.). First Edition. Cloth. Near Fine/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Harback.