The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III

This fifth volume in a landmark anthology gathers some of the most vital voices from the British Isles, spanning roughly a century of extraordinary literary and intellectual ferment. Here you'll encounter James Boswell's celebrated portrait of Samuel Johnson, his legendary wit, his imposing intellect, his surprising tenderness. The collection also features Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose philosophical wandering and poetic ambition defined Romanticism's first stirrings, and Sir Walter Scott, who essentially invented the historical novel and reshaped how the world understands the past. These pages capture a civilization working through revolution, industrialism, and imperial expansion while producing some of the finest prose in the English language. The anthology opens with Boswell's famous account of first meeting Johnson, capturing the awkwardness and reverence of that initial encounter, a scene that has enchanted readers for two centuries. For anyone seeking the roots of modern English literature, this volume offers direct access to the minds that shaped it.