Part of the Handbooks of English Literature series, this comprehensive overview, first published in 1899, provides stimulating discussions of essayists and critics (Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith), authors of memoirs and letters (Lord Chesterfield, Horace Walpole), political writers (Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine), economists (David Hume), novelists (Richardson, Fielding, Sterne), dramatists, poets, and more.