The Works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 18

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

Rating 3.8
Word count
538K words
Chapters
54

Tags

English Originals Classic Works Classical PoeticsDrama ArtPolitical AllegoryLiterary GiantsPower GameMoral DilemmaLiterary CriticismSatirical Style

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 18. Author: Dryden, John, 1631–1700. Language: English. Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature. Release Date: Dec 7, 2015.

Editor's review

This is the eighteenth volume of the eighteen-volume collection of works by the English poet and playwright John Dryden, released by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain English ebook. Dryden was a major literary figure of the English Restoration, and his works span drama, poetry, and literary criticism. As the final volume of the collected works, this volume typically contains letters, miscellanea, or editorial material and is useful for studying the full range of Dryden's writing and the transmission of seventeenth-century English literature. The electronic edition allows full-text searching and is suitable for literature specialists consulting individual volumes. However, public-domain ebooks lack textual notes and modern annotation, so readers should check against authoritative editions or scholarly resources. It is better suited as a supplementary text for academic research than as an introductory reading.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read a selection of Dryden's major works first to build background, then return to the final volume of the collected works to consult specific pieces
  2. Read alongside authoritative critical editions or literary histories to check textual variants and the dating of works
  3. Take notes by genre and situate this volume's contents within the structure of the eighteen-volume collection

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

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FAQ

Which works by Dryden are in Volume 18? The available information only states that this is the eighteenth volume of the eighteen-volume collection and does not list specific contents. Final volumes of collected works usually contain letters, miscellanea, or editorial material, but the exact contents should be confirmed by consulting the ebook's table of contents or an authoritative edition.
Can I understand this volume without annotations? Dryden's language and allusions pose some difficulty for modern readers, and public-domain ebooks lack annotation. It is advisable to have some background in seventeenth-century English literature or to consult an annotated edition at the same time; otherwise comprehension will be difficult.
Is this book suitable for citation in academic papers? It can be used as a textual lead and search tool, but academic citation should preferably check authoritative critical editions or reliable publisher editions and confirm page numbers, variants, and editorial information before citing, rather than relying solely on a public-domain ebook.

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

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.