The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—great Britain and Ireland II

The eighteenth century produced some of the sharpest prose in the English language, and this volume gathers its finest practitioners in one indispensable collection. Here are the essayists who invented the modern voice: Sir Richard Steele on the art of true friendship, Lord Bolingbroke on the currents of power and opinion, Alexander Pope in his prose mask. These writers chronicled an age of unprecedented literary confidence, when the essay became the vehicle for examining everything from the politics of flattery to the philosophy of happiness. The period from 1672 to 1800 marked the moment when English prose ceased to be merely functional and became an art form in itself - witty, precise, and endlessly entertaining. For anyone who wants to understand where modern English writing came from, or simply wants to read something beautifully written, this anthology is a gateway to an era of remarkable intellectual vitality.