Précis d'Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise [antikvár]

PREFACE It is a pleasure and an honour to write not so much a preface^ as the first review of this book niU friend Robert Escarpit, especially as I have read it with some care and much edification. Insofar as it is a short handbook to English literature, it seems to me to have all the merits of a simplified road-map for the use of serious tourists; all the main districts in the region of each century are clearly marked, and all the principal names in each district are shown in their right degrees of importance. But over and above this basic information, Escarpit has managed to give the outlines, so to speak, of the physical and economic geography of our literature: — of the main categories of literary history and criticism. And in marking them, he has been very skilful in combining orthodoxy with intelligence; his work will mislead nobody and it may make some of his readers think. His attempt — heroic is no exaggeration — to see, for example, the nineteenth century as a whole can only help the beginner, and provoke profitable speculations in the more finished mind. And the same can be said of his omissions. In a work of this kind there are always omissions; but having enjoyed the privilege (denied to most reviewers) of discussing them with the author^ I can only assure his readers that he has reasons for all of them, mostly good ones. Hugh Sykes Davies, Lecturer in the University of Cambridge, Fellov/ and Lecturer of St. John's College, Cambridge.