 | Selected Poetry and Prose of John Dryden by John Dryden
Buy used from: $0.99 The first great british writer from this period, John Dryden did it all. He wrote plays and masques, poems, essays, translations. Poems like "Macflecknoe" and his play "All For Love" are simply unforgettable.
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 | Addison's Essays from the Spectator by Joseph Addison
Buy new: $26.22 / Used from: $15.99 Joseph Addison was another great modernizer of the english language, who made it clear and refined. Reading these essays from the Spectator you'll see clearly he was one of the greats.
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 | The True-Born Englishman & Other Writings (Penguin Classics) by Daniel Defoe
Buy used from: $38.33 Daniel Defoe was an incredibly prolific writer, and arguably invented the novel (him and Swift both really).
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 | The Essential Writings of Jonathan Swift (Norton Critical Edition) by Jonathan Swift
Buy new: $13.05 / Used from: $8.99 Ah Jonathan Swift..."Gulliver's Travels" is simply astonishing. Perhaps the frist great science fiction/philosophical novel, he earned the title of greatest satirist.
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 | The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics) by Alexander Pope
Buy new: $18.95 / Used from: $3.22 Alexander Pope, my personal favorite of this bunch, wrote pastoral fantasies in the style of Horace. "Rape of the Lock" really is fantasy on "Midsummer Night's Dream" level. Also, a catholic and as such a very brave man.
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 | Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded (Oxford World's Classics) by Samuel Richardson
Buy new: $6.98 / Used from: $0.22 Wow! Samuel Richardson was the first best selling writer of romance or soap operesque type novels. "Pamela" is actually quite readable and fun, and useful to compare his and DEfoe's novels.
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 | The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias George Smollett
Buy new: $15.95 / Used from: $10.00 I must include Tobias Smollet as the man was quite prolific (like Defoe) in writing picaresque novels. His masterpiece, however, is "Humphrey Clinker" (which everyone should read). Smollet mastered epistolary form (letters)technique to create a panorama of english society.
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 | The Life of Samuel Johnson (Penguin Classics) by James Boswell
Buy new: $11.21 / Used from: $0.01 No list of this period would be complete with out Boswell's "Life of Johnson." In addition to being the first modern biography, Boswell seems to create his own frankenstein in his depiction of Dr. Johnson. The description and dialogue is fascinating.
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 | The Mysteries of Udolpho (Oxford World's Classics) by Ann Radcliffe
Buy used from: $1.89 Mary Radcliffe perfected the gothic novel genre (started by Horace Walpole's "The Castle of Otranto") with "The Mysteries of Udolpho,"
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 | Lyrical Ballads (Penguin Classics) by William Wordsworth
Buy new: $9.89 / Used from: $7.71 I close this period of british literature with Wordsworth's & Coleridge's "Lyrical Ballads", which truly signaled the end of the neoclassical era and beginning of the romantic. Great early stuff from these two (Coleridge's "Rime of the ancient mariner" & Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey").
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