Textbook:
- James Sambrook, The Eighteenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature, 1700—1789, 2nd edn (Longman, 1993)
Primary texts:
Poems in David Fairer and Christine Gerrard, eds, Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). Titles marked # to be read separately in the specified editions.
Daniel Defoe
- The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters (1702) [PDF]
- #Robinson Crusoe (1719) Ed. Michael Shinagel. Norton Critical Edition, 1994
Joseph Addison
- Spectator essays (nos 1, 2, 3, 10, 69) [PDF]
Jonathan Swift
- An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity in England (1708) [PDF]
- #Gulliver’s Travels (1726) Ed. Albert J. Rivero. Norton Critical Edition, 2002
- A Modest Proposal (1729)
Alexander Pope
- Windsor-Forest (1713)
- The Rape of the Lock (1714)
- The Dunciad in Four Books (1743), Book I
James Thomson
- The Seasons (1726—46), ‘Spring’
John Gay
- Trivia: Or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716), Book II
- #The Beggar’s Opera (1728) Ed. Bryan Loughrey and T. O. Treadwell. Penguin Classics, 1986
Samuel Johnson
- ‘On the Death of Dr Robert Levet’ (1783)
- #Rasselas (1759) Ed. Thomas Keymer. Oxford World Classics, 2009
Thomas Gray
- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751)
Oliver Goldsmith
- The Deserted Village (1770)
William Cowper
- The Task (1785), Book I
Charlotte Smith
- Beachy Head (1806)