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, 3rd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2014) ISBN-10: 111882475X ISBN-13: 978-1118824757. 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. ISBN-10: 0393964523 ISBN-13: 978-0393964523.
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. ISBN-10: 0393957241 ISBN-13: 978-0393957242
- A Modest Proposal (1729) [Widely available, e.g., in the Norton Anthology of English Literature]
Alexander Pope
- Windsor-Forest (1713)
- The Rape of the Lock (1714)
- The Dunciad in Four Books (1743), Book I
John Gay
- Trivia: Or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London (1716), Book II
- #The Beggar’s Opera (1728) Ed. Hal Gladfelder. Oxford World’s Classics, 2013. ISBN-10: 0199642222, ISBN-13: 978-0199642229.
Samuel Johnson
- ‘On the Death of Dr Robert Levet’ (1783)
Thomas Gray
- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751)
Oliver Goldsmith
- The Deserted Village (1770)
William Cowper
- The Task (1785), Book I