A History of English Poetry: An Unpublished Continuation

Thomas Warton was among the first to treat English literature as a subject worthy of serious historical inquiry, and this unpublished continuation, composed in 1774, picks up where his celebrated History left off. Here Warton turns his critical attention to the Elizabethan flowering, tracing the sonnet craze that transformed English poetry, the emergence of sophisticated satire, and the cultural conditions that producedSpenser, Shakespeare, and Samuel Daniel. What makes this fragment extraordinary is its dual perspective: Warton both absorbs the Renaissance achievement and judges it through 18th-century eyes, revealing how literary reputation gets built in real time. He examines the Italian roots of the English sonnet, charts its transformation by native poets, and critiques earlier historians for their blind spots. For anyone interested in how we came to canonize the Elizabethans, this is a primary document from the moment of that canon's construction. It captures a brilliant mind wrestling with the origins of English poetic greatness.