An Essay on Criticism
10 best books like An Essay on Criticism (Alexander Pope): A Modest Proposal, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, Don Juan, A Tale of a Tub, The Recruiting Officer, A Defence of Poetry, Absalom and Achitophel, Poor Richard's Almanack
| Author | Jonathan Swift |
| ISBN | 1605977276 |
Last night my daughter asked me to watch what passes for comedy to pre-teens on Nickelodeon; a show low on laughs but high on laugh track. It's Halloween week and of course the thematic drum of cheap scares and slutty costumes (those of you dads that have 11 year old girls know what it is like to take a knee...
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
| Author | Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
| ISBN | 0486223051 |
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (originally "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere") is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 and featuring...
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
| Author | William Blake |
| ISBN | 0486281221 |
Once regarded as a brilliant eccentric whose works skirted the outer fringes of English art and literature, William Blake (1757–1827) is today recognized as a major poet, a profound thinker, and one of the most original and exciting English artists. Nowhere is his glorious poetic and pictorial...
| Author | Samuel Johnson |
| ISBN | 0192839136 |
Written in one week to defray the cost of his mother's funeral, Johnson's moral tale is a superior example of the prose of its era, and its era—the Age of Enlightenment—is renowned for the quality of its prose. It is true that Candide—written in 1759, the same year as Rasselas--excels Johnson's...
| Author | Lord Byron |
| ISBN | 0140424520 |
Probably few subjects fitted Byron's particular talents better than Don Juan.
In this rambling, exuberant, conversational poem, the travels of Don Juan are used as a vehicle for some of the most lively and acute commentaries on human societies and behaviour in the language. The manner is...
| Author | Jonathan Swift |
| ISBN | 0141018879 |
'A Tale of a Tub' was the first big work written by Jonathan Swift. It is arguably his most difficult satire, and perhaps his most masterly. The Tale is a prose parody which is divided into sections of "digression" and a "tale" of three brothers, each representing one of the main branches of western Christianity....
| Author | George Farquhar |
| ISBN | 0803253575 |
Since its first appearance in 1706, The Recruiting Officer has remained a scathing satire of military recruitment. George Farquhar knew the subject well, since he had been involved himself in the tricks and intimidation that enlisted recruits for Queen Anne's army in the War of Spanish Succession...
| Author | Philip Sidney |
| ISBN | 0199110220 |
This is probably still the best way to finish a Defense:
"But if - fie of such a but! - you be born so near the dull-making cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry, or rather,...
| Author | John Dryden |
| ISBN | 1419104535 |
Excerpt from Absalom and Achitophel:
'Thebes did his green unknowing youth engage, He chooses Athens in his riper age.'
But these lines prove nothing, being probably prompted by no other motive than the desire of the moment to please an Oxford audience. A passage in a letter from Dryden...
| Author | Benjamin Franklin |
| ISBN | 0880889187 |
Peruse the bookshelves at the museum shop of the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, and you will no doubt see this edition of Poor Richard's Almanack. It is great fun reading 77 pages' worth of Benjamin Franklin's maxims for industry, thrift, humility, and cheerfulness -- maxims...
