Download or read book Harvard Classics Volume 40: English Poetry Volume 1 of 3: Chaucer to Gray written by Geoffrey Chaucer and published by . This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compiled and Edited by Charles W. Eliot in 1909, the Harvard Classics is a 51-volume Anthology of classic literature from throughout the history of western civilization. The set is sometimes called "Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf." The interior of this book is a facsimile reproduction of the 1909 edition. Search for the other books in this series with the keyword hcbooks. Volume 40 is the first of three dedicated to English poets and they are presented chronologically. This volume starts with Geoffrey Chaucer (approx 1343 - 1400) and ends with Thomas Gray (1716 - 1771). From the Introductory Note: 'The aim in these three volumes of English Poetry has been to give, as far as the limits of space allowed, a substantial representation of the most distinguished poets of England and America for the last five hundred years. Among previous anthologies an especially wide recognition has been given by the best judges to Francis Turner Palgrave's "Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language," first published in 1861; and it has been thought best to make that collection the nucleus of the present one. All the poems originally selected by Mr. Palgrave have, accordingly, been retained, with the exception of those by Milton and Burns, which appear in the Harvard Classics in the complete editions of the poetical works of these two authors.'