The fourth volume of The Pelican Guide to English Literature covers the period from Dryden to Johnson. It begins with a survey of the social context of English Literature during this period, followed by a survey of the literature itself, much of it literature of the Augustan Age. The rest of the book is made up of a series of essays dealing in detail with Dryden, Swift, Pope; the Essayists, the novelists Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne; Goldsmith, Johnson etc. There are also essays on Hogarth, and eighteenth century architecture and planning. Finally the volume contains an appendix of biographies and bibliographies.

CONTENTS:
General Introduction
PART 1
The Social Setting
PART 2
The Literary Scene
PART 3
John Dryden
Samuel Butler and Hudibras
Language 1600-1784
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Restoration Comedy
Literary Theory and Literary Criticism
Literature and Science
Defoe as Novelist
The Periodical Essayists
An Approach to Swift
Alexander Pope
Poetry in the Eighteenth Century
William Hogarth
Samuel Richardson
Fielding and Smollett
Tristram Shandy and Its Tradition
Augustan Reflective Poetry
Oliver Goldsmith
William Cowper
Johnson
Architecture and Landscape
PART 4
Appendix
Index