Electronic Texts

Scanned and edited by Jack Lynch

I’ve been scanning and editing electronic texts since the early 1990s. They’re mostly for use in my classes, using the good-enough standard rather than the carefully-prepared-critical-edition standard. Comments and corrections are welcome.

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• Miscellaneous:
• Parables from Matthew 25 as translated by Wycliffe, Tyndale, and the KJV translators
• Selected Eighteenth-century poems on smallpox
• Selected eighteenth-century poems on beauty
• Trial of Elizabeth Barnes and Richard Jeffreys for the Murder of Elizabeth Jeffreys
• Frankenstein exercise
• Songs from Pills to Purge Melancholy
• From The Complete Newgate Calendar:
• Jack Sheppard
• Jonathan Wild
• Anonymous:
• The prologue to Beowulf in Old English, with Modern English glosses
• “Sumer Is Icumen In”
• London’s Disease, and Cure
• Vox Populi, His Sacred Majestys Happy Return Congratulated in Thirty Heroic Stanza’s (1660)
• Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele:
• Spectator 1 (1711)
• Spectator 2 (1711)
• Spectator 10 (1711)
• Spectator 11 (1711)
• Spectator 411 (1712)
• Spectator 412 (1712)
• The Spectator (selections: nos. 160, 267, and 279)
• Ælfric:
• Colloquy (selection)
• Aristotle:
• Poetics, trans. S. H. Butcher
• Mary Astell:
• A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (selections)
• John Aubrey:
• Robert Boyle
• John Dee
• William Shakespeare
• Jane Austen:
• Pride and Prejudice
• Francis Bacon:
• “Of Studies”
• Anna Letitia Barbauld:
• “On the Rights of Woman” (1792)
• John Barbour:
• The Bruce (selections)
• William Beckford:
• Vathek
• Aphra Behn:
• The History of the Nun
• Oroonoko (1688)
• “To the Fair Clarinda”
• Richard Bentley:
• Paradise Lost, Preface and Book I, ed. Bentley
• George Berkeley:
• Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (selections)
• Ambrose Bierce:
• The Devil’s Dictionary (selections)
• James Boswell:
• “No Abolition of Slavery” (1791)
• A Letter on Shakespeare’s Jubilee (1769)
• The Louisa episode from Boswell’s London Journal (1763)
• From The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791):
• Johnson and Dodd
• Boswell’s Visit to Tyburn and Newgate
• Selected Opinions of Samuel Johnson:
• Fear of Damnation
• Death
• “Morbid Melancholy”
• The Beggar’s Opera
• Christopher Smart
• David Hume
• The Death Penalty
• Executions
• Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson (1785) (complete)
• Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson (abridged)
• Selection from Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson
• Macaulay’s Review of Croker’s Boswell (1831)
• John Breval:
• The Art of Dress
• Edmund Burke:
• A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1759) (selections)
• Frances Burney:
• Evelina (selections)
• Byron, George Gordon, Lord Byron:
• A Vision of Judgment
• Cædmon:
• “Cædmon’s Hymn” in Old English with a Modern English gloss
• Margaret Cavendish:
• Cavendish on Shakespeare (letter 123 from CCXI Sociable Letters)
• Geoffrey Chaucer:
• The Canterbury Tales (late fourteenth century):
• General Prologue
• General Prologue (selections)
• The Miller’s Prologue and Tale
• The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale
• Mary, Lady Chudleigh:
• “To the Ladies”
• John Cleland:
• Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) (1759) (complete)
• Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill) (abridged)
• Peter Coulse:
Penelopes Complaint
• William Davenant and John Dryden:
• The Tempest; or, The Enchanted Island
• Daniel Defoe:
• The Apparation of Mrs. Veal
• Selection from Robinson Crusoe (1719), where Crusoe collects things from his ship and considers leaving the money behind
• A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) (complete)
• A Journal of the Plague Year (abridged to about 20 percent of the length of the original)
• Olympe de Gouges:
• A Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen
• Sir John Denham:
• “Cooper’s Hill”
• Thomas De Quincey:
• Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (as well as an abridged version)
• John Donne:
• “Holy Sonnet 7” (“At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners”)
• “Holy Sonnet 14” (“Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God”)
• “Satyr IIII”
• “A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning”
• John Dryden:
• Absalom and Achitophel
• The Æneis of Virgil, books 1 and 4
• “Alexander’s Feast”
• A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (complete)
• A Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (abridged)
• An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (complete)
• An Essay of Dramatick Poesie (abridged)
• Juvenal’s Third Satire
• Mac Flecknoe
• The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man (complete)
• The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man (abridged)
• John Dyer:
• “Grongar Hill”
• Henry Fielding:
• Shamela
• Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea:
• “Adam Pos’d”
• “Nocturnal Reverie”
• The Spleen
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
• The Yellow Wallpaper
• William Godwin:
• Political Justice (selections)
• Thomas Gray:
• Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751)
• John Gregory:
• A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters (complete)
• A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters (abridged)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne:
• The Minister’s Black Veil
• Rappaccini’s Daughter
• Young Goodman Brown
• Eliza Haywood:
• “Fantomina”
• George Herbert:
• “The Altar”
• “The Collar”
• Robert Herrick:
• “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”
• “Upon the Nipples of Julia’s Breast’
• William Hogarth:
• Selected Hogarth Prints
• Horace:
• Satire 2.1
• Satire 2.2
• David Hume:
• “My Own Life”
• A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (selections)
• William Henry Ireland:
• An Authentic Account of the Shaksperian Manuscripts
• Vortigern
• Samuel Johnson:
• Poems:
• “An Epitaph on Claudy Phillips, a Musician”
• “Gnothi Seauton”
• “London” (1738 edition)
• “London” (1738 edition, with my own annotations for teaching)
• “On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet”
• “A Short Song of Congratulation”
• The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749 edition)
• The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749 edition, with annotations)
• Biographies:
• The Life of Ascham
• The Life of Browne
• The Life of Collins
• The Life of Cowley (1779) (complete)
• The Life of Cowley (abridged)
• The Life of Dryden (1779) (complete)
• The Life of Dryden (abridged)
• The Life of Gray (complete)
• The Life of Gray (abridged)
• The Life of Milton (1779) (complete)
• The Life of Milton (abridged)
• The Life of Pope (complete)
• The Life of Pope (abridged)
• The Life of Savage (complete)
• The Life of Savage (abridged)
• Periodical Essays:
• Selected Rambler and Idler essays
• Rambler 12
• Rambler 18
• Rambler 32
• Rambler 36
• Rambler 37
• Rambler 39
• Rambler 60
• Rambler 68
• Rambler 113
• Rambler 114
• Rambler 121
• Rambler 156
• Rambler 167
• Rambler 168
• Rambler 191
• Idler 5
• Idler 22
• Idler 22 (Original)
• Idler 60
• Idler 61
• Idler 84
• Idler 100
• Miscellaneous Criticism:
• Selected Annotations on King Lear
• Annotations on Hamlet
• Of the Duty of a Journalist
• Fiction:
• Rasselas (1759) (complete)
• Rasselas (abridged)
• The Fountains
• Letters:
• Letter to Chesterfield, 7 February 1755
• Letters to Hester Thrale Piozzi
• An Account of the Harleian Library
• Annals
• A Plan of an English Dictionary
• Preface to the Dictionary (1755) (complete)
• Preface to the Dictionary (1755) (abridged)
• Selections from the Dictionary (1755)
• A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) (complete)
• A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (abridged)
• A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (selections)
• Observations on the Present State of Affairs
• Preface to Shakespeare (1765), abridged to roughly half the length of the original, with notes
• Preface to Father Lobo
• Review of Soame Jenyns (complete)
• Review of Soame Jenyns (abridged)
• Review of Hanway on Tea
• Prayers and Meditations
• Sermon 5
• Taxation No Tyranny
• Charles Lamb:
• The Adventures of Ulysses (complete)
• The Adventures of Ulysses (Abridged)
• William Langland:
• Piers Plowman (late fourteenth century), Prologue
• Matthew Lewis:
• The Monk (1796)
• John Locke:
• Second Treatise of Government (selections)
• Essay, Book II, Chapter 1 (selections)
• Essay, Book II, Chapter 27 (selections)
• Essay, Book IV, Chapter 19
• Essay on language
• H. P. Lovecraft:
• The Picture in the House
• Richard Lovelace:
• “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars”
• John Lyly:
• Selection from Euphues
• Henry Mackenzie:
• From The Man of Feeling
• James Macpherson:
• A Dissertation concering the Antiquity, &c. of the Poems of Ossian the Son of Fingal (selections)
• Thomas Malory:
• Syr Launcelot du Lake, book 6 of Le Morte d’Arthur
• Bernard Mandeville:
• “The Grumbling Hive”
• Christopher Marlowe:
• “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
• John Milton:
• Lycidas
• Paradise Lost (1667) (complete)
• Paradise Lost (note on the verse and the first 124 lines)
• Elizabeth Montagu:
• Introduction to An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear
• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu:
• Verses Addressed to the Imitator of Horace
• Letters
• Letters (abridged)
• Samuel Pepys:
• Diary (selections)
• Katherine Philips:
• “Against Love”
• “Content, to My Dearest Lucasia”
• “Friendship’s Mystery”
• “Happiness”
• “On Controversies in Religion”
• “On the Death of the Queen of Bohemia”
• “Orinda to Lucasia Parting”
• “To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship”
• “To My Lucasia”
• “The Virgin”
• Hester Thrale Piozzi:
• Thraliana (selections)
• Edgar Allan Poe:
• The Black Cat (1843)
• The Cask of Amontillado (1846)
• The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
• Ligeia (1838)
• The Masque of the Red Death (1842)
• The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
• John Polidori:
• The Vampyre (1819)
• Alexander Pope:
• An Epistle to Arbuthnot
• The Dunciad, book 4 (1729)
• An Essay on Criticism
• Windsor-Forest
• “Epistle II, To a Lady: On the Characters of Women”
• The Rape of the Lock
• The Iliad of Homer, Book I
• Preface to Shakespeare
• Imitations of Horace (Satires 2.1 and 2.2)
• Plutarch:
• Alexander (abridged to about 40% of its original length)
• Walter Ralegh:
• “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
• Samuel Richardson:
• Pamela (1740)
• Rambler 97
• John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester:
• “The Disabled Debauchee”
• “The Imperfect Enjoyment”
• “A Satyr against Reason and Mankind”
• “A Satyr on Charles II”
• “Signor Dildo”
• “Song” (“Love a Woman? You’re an Ass”)
• John Scott:
• “Ode to Disease”
• Anna Seward:
• “To the Poppy”
• “Sonnet XII”
• “Sonnet XIII”
• “Sonnet XIX”
• William Shakespeare:
• Sonnet 1
• Sonnet 18
• Sonnet 29
• Sonnet 55
• Percy Bysshe Shelley:
• Selections from A Defence of Poetry
• Ozymandias
• Prometheus Unbound
• James Shirley:
• The Triumph of Peace
• Sir Gawain:
• Selection from Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight (late fourteenth century)
• Adam Smith:
Wealth of Nations (1776) (selections)
• Charlotte Smith:
• Sonnet XLVII: To Fancy
• Sonnet LXIII: The Gossamer
• Sonnet LXX: On Being Cautioned against Walking on an Headland Overlooking the Sea, because It Was Frequented by a Lunatic
• Edmund Spenser:
• The Faerie Queene, book 1 (1590)
• Thomas Sprat:
• Selection from A History of the Royal Society
• Laurence Sterne:
• Tristram Shandy (selections relating to birth and obstetrics)
• Robert Louis Stevenson:
• The Strage Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Jonathan Swift:
• The Battle of the Books
• Description of a City Shower
• Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
• “A Modest Proposal” (1730)
• “A Digression on Madness” (from A Tale of a Tub) (selection)
• “A Proposal for Correcting . . . the English Tongue”
• Poems:
• “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed”
• “Cassinus and Peter”
• “The Lady’s Dressing Room”
• “Strephon and Chloe”
• “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift”
• Nahum Tate:
• King Lear (1681)
• James Thomson:
• “Winter, a Poem” (from The Seasons)
• Frederick Jackson Turner:
• “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
• Voltaire:
• “Letter on Inoculation and Smallpox” from English Letters
• Horace Walpole:
• The Castle of Otranto (1764)
• Ned Ward:
• Description of Bedlam (from The London Spy)
• Joseph Warton:
• “The Enthusiast; or, The Lover of Nature” (1744)
• Oscar Wilde:
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Gerrard Winstanley:
• A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England
• Mary Wollstonecraft:
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (complete)
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (abridged)
• William Wordsworth:
• The Two-Book Prelude
• Ann Yearsley:
• “A Poem on the Inhumanity of the Slave Trade (1788)