PREFACE THE purpose of The Reader's Library is to present in succinct form a survey of English literature. The method adopted is to assemble under generic titles the best specimens of the various branches of literature, in such a way that each volume shall be of equal service to the scholar and the general reader. The first two volumes of the series, The Great English Letter-Writers, are now presented to the public. The selections have been carefully arranged, with a view not to chronological order so much as to the illustration of the growth of the art of letter-writing. The object of the editors has been to present what may be called a pageant-view of their theme: to show how various men and women, scattered through different ages, have borne themselves under the same crises of emotion or action. That which is obviously lost in abandoning a strictly chronological arrangement is recaptured in the introductory essays to each volume, which aim at a general historic survey of the art of letter-writing, together with a critical estimate of the writers, and of their relationship to the literature of their age. Biographical details concerning these writers are contained in the body of the volume. Where a subject cannot be adequately treated in one volume, as is the case with The Great Letter-Writers, each volume contains a separate essay, so that it may be, as far as is possible, complete in itself. |