ABSTRACT

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation. Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects. The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

chapter 1|5 pages

1. Contemporary comments on Defoe

chapter 2|3 pages

Pope, Swift and the Scriblerians on Defoe

chapter 3|7 pages

A satire on Robinson Crusoe

chapter 4|1 pages

A biographic entry

chapter 5|3 pages

The mid-century view

chapter 6|2 pages

Rousseau on Robinson Crusoe

chapter 7|4 pages

The close of the century

chapter 8|2 pages

Dr Johnson on Defoe

chapter 9|1 pages

James Beattie on the ‘new romance'

chapter 10|1 pages

Hugh Blair on Defoe

chapter 11|4 pages

The beginnings of serious study

chapter 12|14 pages

Scott on Defoe's life and works

chapter 13|6 pages

Coleridge on Robinson Crusoe

chapter 15|1 pages

Carlyle on Homer, Richardson and Defoe

chapter 16|17 pages

A major study

chapter 17|5 pages

Hazlitt on Defoe

chapter 18|3 pages

Two reviews of Wilson's Memoirs

chapter 19|1 pages

Wordsworth on Robinson Crusoe

chapter 20|2 pages

Two verse tributes by W. S. Landor

chapter 21|1 pages

De Quincey on verisimilitude

chapter 23|3 pages

George Borrow discovers Crusoe

chapter 24|25 pages

The novelist assessed

chapter 25|10 pages

The climate of the fifties

chapter 26|6 pages

Taine on Defoe

chapter 27|2 pages

Karl Marx on Robinson Crusoe

chapter 28|9 pages

Leslie Stephen on Defoe

chapter 29|13 pages

The biographer's view

chapter 30|5 pages

The legacy of Defoe

chapter 32|1 pages

The Edinburgh Review on Defoe

chapter 33|4 pages

The supremacy of Crusoe

chapter 34|6 pages

William Minto on Defoe