The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets

Winstanley, William, 1628？-1698Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4
Word count
313K words
Chapters
32

Tags

English Originals Literary Figures Literary ArchivesPortrait GalleryBiographical LiteratureLiterary GiantsGroup BiographyPoet BiographyLiterary AnecdotesLiterary CriticismSeventeenth CenturyBritish Literature

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) by William WinstanleyAuthor: Winstanley, William, 1628?-1698,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Mar 25, 2005

Editor's review

Published in 1687, The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets is an early representative of seventeenth-century English literary biography. In the form of brief lives, the author records the English poets he deemed worthy, in a style marked by the tastes and personal judgments of his age; the work preserves information on some poets now rarely remembered and reflects the formation and shifts of literary taste at the time. For readers studying the history of English criticism, the tradition of life writing, and seventeenth-century print culture, it is a valuable primary source. The language is early modern English, with spelling and syntax that differ from modern English and require patience in reading. The free electronic edition makes it easy to search and compare. It is best read as supplementary material for literary history rather than as a rigorous modern biography; note the distinction between historical record and the author's personal praise or blame, and weigh it against later literary histories.

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Reading tips

  1. Start with the table of contents, pick entries on poets you already know, then move on to unfamiliar ones.
  2. Compare with modern literary histories as you read, noting where the author's judgments differ from later consensus.
  3. When early modern spelling differs, read for overall sentence meaning rather than dwelling on every word.
  4. Take notes on the author's language of praise and blame to appreciate how seventeenth-century literary taste was expressed.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32

FAQ

Is the English in this book very different from modern English? Yes， to some extent. Published in 1687， the book uses early modern English； spelling， punctuation， and sentence structure differ from modern English， and some words have different meanings. Readers with a good foundation in English can finish it with notes or a dictionary， but it takes patience.
Are the poets included in the book still famous today? The book includes poets still studied today as well as many names that have received less attention since. That is part of its value： it shows the list of the “famous” as seventeenth-century readers saw it， helping readers understand how literary classics are selected and how they change.
Is this book suitable as a textbook for English literary history? It is not suitable as a systematic textbook. It is a seventeenth-century primary source with the author's personal preferences and the limitations of his age， and it is not comprehensive. It is better used as supplementary reading for a literary history course， alongside modern literary histories.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Winstanley, William, 1628？-1698 Author · English · 1628–1698

William Winstanley (1628?–1698) was a seventeenth-century English writer. Public information on his life and the exact dates of his birth and death is limited. He is known for his biographical writing and pamphlets, which were aimed at ordinary readers and written in a plain, lively style that clearly bears the mark of his time. His representative work, The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets, records the lives of English poets in biographical form, combining the compilation of historical material with appeal for a general readership, and it offers later generations a useful reference for understanding the literary scene of seventeenth-century England. One of his works is currently held in the collection. On the whole, Winstanley is a noteworthy figure in seventeenth-century English popular biography and pamphlet writing.