The Poetical Works of Addison Gay's Fables and Somerville's Chase

Somerville, William, 1675-1742Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
566K words
Chapters
57

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Nature ObservationPoetry CollectionTraditional AestheticsAncient StyleMusical Rhythm

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 Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase by Addison et al.Author: Somerville, William, 1675-1742,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jan 1, 2004

Editor's review

This collection brings together in one volume the work of three eighteenth-century English poets: Addison's poems, Gay's fables, and Somerville's The Chase. It is less a single collection to be read from cover to cover than a browsable specimen cabinet of poetry. Its value lies in presenting several facets of English poetry in the Enlightenment—moral allegory, fable narrative, and rural hunting description—set side by side within one volume, letting readers directly sense the differences in verse form, prosody, and subject matter of the period. As a public-domain e-book, the original text is preserved complete, making it suitable for textual comparison and for introductory study of English poetry. It is best used as a reference book: begin with Gay's short fable pieces for practice, then move on to Somerville's longer hunting poem, and finally return to Addison's poems, which makes it easier to distinguish their respective tones and rhetorical habits. Note that this is an English-language original, and since three authors share one volume, it lacks modern annotation and introduction; first-time readers will need a dictionary and background materials.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Start with Gay's short fable poems—brief and clear in moral—to establish a reading rhythm.
  2. Keep an English literary dictionary on hand to look up eighteenth-century usage and allusions, making notes as you go.
  3. Read poems on similar themes by the three authors side by side to compare differences in meter and allegorical technique.
  4. There is no need to read straight through in table-of-contents order; group by theme or author and read a few poems at a time.

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
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  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
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English? This is an English-language original containing poems by Addison, Gay, and Somerville. There is no Chinese translation, and readers will need some ability to read English poetry.
Why are works by three authors combined in one volume? This is a common arrangement for public-domain ebooks, combining English poetry from the same period or with similar themes in one publication so readers can encounter multiple styles of eighteenth-century English poetry in one place, rather than a dedicated complete works of a single author.
Can I understand it without annotations? It is somewhat difficult. The book contains no modern annotations or introduction; eighteenth-century vocabulary, allusions, and allegory require a dictionary and literary-historical references for support. It is advisable to look things up as you read, or to use it alongside relevant scholarly works.

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About the author

Somerville, William, 1675-1742 Author · British · 1675–1742

William Somerville (1675–1742) was an English poet best known for his long poem on hunting, The Chase. Public information about his life is limited, and what is known centres mainly on his literary work. His poetry brings the scenes, techniques and countryside of hunting into verse, earning him a place in the eighteenth-century English tradition of poetry about outdoor pursuits and rural life. The Chase is his most representative achievement and the main basis for later readers' understanding of his poetic style. In the library's copy of The Poetical Works of Addison Gay's Fables and Somerville's Chase, his long poem appears in a collection with works by other poets, showing that his writing circulated alongside poetry of similar or contemporary themes. On the whole, Somerville is known for a single subject, produced a modest body of work, and made a contribution to the genre of hunting poetry.