A History of English Literature

"A History of English Literature" by Robert Huntington Fletcher is a late 19th-century educational text designed to help people understand English literature by looking at how it changed over time and celebrating the important writers and their works. The book intends to be a complete and easy-to-follow guide for anyone interested in reading and learning about English literature, explaining that it’s important to think about the world around the authors at the time and also what makes the literature special on its own. Fletcher wants readers to get two things out of studying literature: an understanding of the social and historical background of different literary periods, and a love for how art expresses life and personal feelings. The story starts with the early Britons and Anglo-Saxons, focusing on what they were like and what they gave to English literature, which is just the beginning of a long trip through England's literary past.