Excerpt from A Primer of English Literature This book aims at being what its title indicates -a primer, a first book. It strives to tell simply and clearly a few things, and to bring prominently before the reader only the greatest literary names. The author has found that young readers get very little from a book which presupposes wide knowledge on their part, or which deals with elabo rate literary criticism. Much reading is done in the schools, however, and it is necessary to give pupils some chronological idea of the growth of literature and the place of authors. It is the pur pose of this book to supply that chronology in form somewhat fuller than an outline, and yet less bulky than the regular histories. While it gives no new point of view or illuminating criticisms, it hopes to meet the need of all classes of students who wish to acquire in a straightforward way the gen erally accepted facts of English literary history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.