Limiting itself to only the most essential and famous authors writing in English, this 1904 introduction to literature devotes itself mainly to Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson, Bacon, Milton, Pope, Defoe, Swift, Burns, Scott, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, plus Samuel Johnson's circle and the novelists of the 18th century and Victorian ages. The book's narrowness in scope allows room for more stimulating information.