The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 07

Dryden, John, 1631-1700Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
704K words
Chapters
71

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Classical PoeticsPolitical AllegoryPortrait GalleryLiterary GiantsPower GameIntellectual CommentaryTheater CriticismSatirical StyleTraditional AestheticsMusical 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 Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 07Author: Dryden, John, 1631-1700,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Jul 31, 2005

Editor's review

This is Volume 7 of the eighteen-volume collected works of John Dryden, an important body of seventeenth-century English literature. Dryden was a poet, playwright, and critic whose work spans drama, verse satire, and literary criticism. As part of the complete works, this volume's value lies in presenting one stage of his creative and literary career, allowing readers to proceed volume by volume and read piece by piece. Its strength is that it preserves the original texts and old-style arrangement, making it suitable for textual collation and language study; it is also useful for understanding the literary tastes, stage conventions, and political context of the Restoration period. It is best suited to specialists in English literature, historians of drama, and enthusiasts who wish to read Dryden systematically. Because it is one volume of an English-language collected works and lacks modern annotation, first-time readers need some background preparation.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. First learn about Dryden's life and the Restoration background, then move on to individual pieces.
  2. Read the pieces in the order they appear in the volume; for plays, begin with the dramatis personae and scene descriptions.
  3. Read alongside a reliable edition or annotated version to reduce the obstacles of old spelling and allusions.
  4. Take notes on the genre and theme of each piece to grasp the organizing logic of the collected works.

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
  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
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71

FAQ

Can this volume be read on its own? It can be dipped into on its own, but it is Volume 7 of an eighteen-volume collected works, and its contents are connected to the preceding and following volumes. To understand the overall arc of Dryden's work, it is advisable to read it alongside the complete contents and other volumes.
Does the text have modern annotation? According to the information available, this is a public-domain text released by Project Gutenberg, an electronic presentation of an older collected edition, and it generally does not include modern scholarly annotation. Readers must consult background materials themselves or compare it with an annotated edition.
Is it suitable for English learners practicing reading? It is not very suitable as general English-learning material. The text is seventeenth-century English, and its spelling, syntax, and allusions are distant from modern readers; it is better suited to readers who already have some foundation in English literature.

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About the author

Dryden, John, 1631-1700 Author

John Dryden (1631-1700) is a major figure in English literary history, whose work spans poetry, drama and literary criticism. This library holds twenty-one of his works, mostly volumes of the eighteen-volume Works of John Dryden and the first two volumes of The Poetical Works, together with the tragedy All for Love; or, The World Well Lost. These texts show him writing heroic tragedy and comedy as well as poetry and translation, in a style marked by balance, clarity and vigour, often using the heroic couplet for serious themes. Because public information is limited, the details of his life cannot be firmly established, yet the surviving works sufficiently show his central place in Restoration letters and his lasting influence on the language and versification of later English poetry.