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What to read 1601-1700

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\/ 17th Century

CHILD Ballads The Online Books Page Leslie Nelson fan site | KWIC Concordance Kenneth Rexroth essay
a collection of 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child [1825-1896] during the second half of the 19th century. ... The majority of the ballads, however, date to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. --Wikipedia

Antoine Francois PREVOST (1697-1763, Abbe Prevost) The Online Books Page
a French author and novelist. --Wikipedia

Manon Lescaut (1731)
Manon Lescaut is perhaps the first love story to be told not as a tragedy of fate but a tragedy of human failings. --Arnold Weinstein

VOLTAIRE (1694-1778) The Online Books Page post
Francois-Marie Arouet ... known by his nom de plume Voltaire ... was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher --Wikipedia

Philosophic Letters on the English (Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais, 1734)
Voltaire was the first publicly passionate Anglophile; unlike the snobbish variety, he did not admire English manners so much as English political moderation. --Brooke Allen
The anti-Shakespearean values that Voltaire came to symbolise are, roughly speaking, those of the Enlightenment, to which the English imagination has never been very hospitable. --Seamus Perry

Zadig (Memnon, 1747)
deals with a youth who practices all the virtues but still meets with misfortune. An angel finally explains that some good comes out of all evil, and that everything is predestined. --Philip Ward

The Age of Louis XIV (Siecle de Louis XIV, 1751)

Micromegas (1752)

The Lisbon Earthquake (Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne, 1756)

Candide (1759) Pangloss Wisdom
satirizes what Voltaire condidered to be the irrational optimism of Leibnitz in the person of Dr. Pangloss, whose perennial view is that 'everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds'. --Philip Ward

Letter to Cardinal de Bernis (April 23, 1761)

Letter to Countess de Barcewitz (Dec. 24, 1761)

A Treatise on Toleration (Traite sur la tolerance, 1763)

Philosophical Dictionary (Dictionnaire philosophique, 1764)
The form of the 'Philosophical Dictionary' was ideal for Voltaire's purpose, an alphabetical medley covering a vast range of topics, on each of which the author could exercise his sharp wit. --Robert B. Downs

L'Ingenu (1767)
about a youth, born in Canada of French parents, who spends twenty years among the Huron indians and, arriving in France, finds much to wonder at in Roman Catholic tenets and much to attach in the bureaucracy of Louis XV. --Philip Ward

Letter to James Marriott (Feb. 26, 1767)

Letter to Frederick the Great (April 6, 1767)

The Age of Louis XV (Siecle de Louis XV, 1768)

Letter to M. Le Riche (Feb. 6, 1770)

Epitre a l'Auteur du Livres des Trois Imposteurs (Nov. 10, 1770)

Select Letters (anthology 1963)

Joseph BUTLER (1692-1752) The Online Books Page
an English bishop, theologian, apologist, and philosopher. ... He is known, among other things, for his critique of Thomas Hobbes's egoism and John Locke's theory of personal identity. --Wikipedia

The Analogy of Religion (1736)

Takeda IZUMO (1691-1756) The Online Books Page
A theatre manager and writer... collaborated with several other authors on all-day history plays, the so-called "Three Great Masterpieces" of puppet drama --Encyclopaedia Britannica

Miyoshi SHORAKU (1696-1772)

Namiki SOSUKE (1695-c. 1751)
also known as Namiki Senryu, was a prominent Japanese playwright who wrote for both kabuki and bunraku (puppet theater). --Wikipedia

The Treasury of Loyal Retainers (Kanadehon Chushingura, 1748) Paul Kennelly introduction post
an 11-act bunraku puppet play ... It is one of the most popular Japanese plays --Wikipedia
A lord is provoked to kill a court official and is subsequently ordered to commit suicide. His retainers band together to avenge his death. The play is interspersed with love scenes, thus combining the two most popular plots of the puppet stage. --Philip Ward

MONTESQUIEU (1689-1755) The Online Books Page
a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Age of Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers --Wikipedia

Persian Letters (Lettres persanes, 1722)

The Spirit of Laws (De l'esprit des lois, 1748)
Montesquieu's work, therefore, is not a treatise on law as such (as, for instance, Aquinas' Treatise on Law is). Instead, we might call it a treatise on how laws ought to be adapted to particular circumstances and situations. ... it is true that The Spirit of Laws was not well received by the rationalists dominating the eighteeth-century French intellectual scene. ... The Spirit of Laws was more congenial to British and American thought. --Peter Wolff

also

The Motives That Ought to Encourage Us to the Sciences (November 15, 1725) The New Atlantis (Winter 2008)

Samuel RICHARDSON (1689-1767) The Online Books Page
an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels --Wikipedia
Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment. --Samuel Johnson

Pamela (1740) John Mullan essay

Clarissa (1748)
Clarissa's solemn moralizing marked the English novel, led to a thousand works in which men confidently depicted female characters--and so helped, consciously or not, to alienate women from their own feelings and 'truth'. --Raphael and McLeish

Sir Charles Grandison (1753)

1688: The First Modern Revolution, by Steve Pincus, review by The Economist, October 15, 2009

Alexander POPE (1688-1744) The Online Books Page Samuel Johnson biography | post
an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. --Wikipedia
In Pope I cannot read a Line, / But with a Sigh, I wish it mine. --Jonathan Swift

Ode on Solitude (c. 1700)

Letter to William Wycherley (June 23, 1705)

Essay on Criticism (1711)
sympathetic yet divergent re-creation of Horace ... . a monument of Neo-classicism in England. --Raphael and McLeish

The Rape of the Lock (1712)
the anthology favorite ... which, for all its beauties and such delicious phrases as 'the cosmetic powers', has long seemed to me an exceptionally campy work, an epic in drag. --Michael Dirda

Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717)
he can be as delicate and lovely as A. E. Housman. --Michael Dirda

Eloisa to Abelard (1717)
Years have passed since the doomed love affair of the famous couple, and Eloisa has become a nun. But her ardor for her lost Abelard burns even in the convent... . --Michael Dirda

Intended for Sir Isaac Newton (1727)

Letter to John Gay (October 16, 1727)

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)

The Dunciad (1728)
Even The Dunciad--aptly described as a series of versified political cartoons--concludes with a magnificent vision of the triumph of Dullness. --Michael Dirda

An Essay on Man (1733-34)

An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734)
Listen, in the opening of the 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot', to the harried voice of the famous literary man beset by would-be authors and fans... . --Michael Dirda

Moral Essays or Epistles to Several Persons (1731-1735)
Epistle to Burlington (1731), Epistle to Bathurst (1733), Epistle to Cobham (1734), Epistle to a Lady (1735)

Epistle to Augustus (1737)

Pierre de MARIVAUX (1688-1763) The Online Books Page
a French novelist and dramatist. He is considered one of the most important French playwrights of the 18th century --Wikipedia

Up from the Country (Paysan parvenu, 1735-36)

Emanuel SWEDENBORG (1688-1772) The Online Books Page post
a Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian, revelator, and, in the eyes of some, Christian mystic. --Wikipedia

Heaven and Hell (De Caelo et Ejus Mirabilibus et de inferno: Ex Auditis et Visis, 1758)
The most imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a purely philosophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

HAKUIN Ekaku (1686-1768) The Online Books Page
one of the most influential figures in Japanese Zen Buddhism. --Wikipedia
...greatest of the Tokugawa perion Zen Masters, restored Rinzai Zen to the purity of its T'ang and Sung traditions. --A Guide to Oriental Classics

My Old Tea Kettle (Orategama, 1748)

Wild Ivy (Itsumadegusa, 1765-1766)

George BERKELEY (1685-1753) The Online Books Page | David R. Wilkins fan site Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immaterialism" (later referred to as "subjective idealism" by others). --Wikipedia

A New Theory of Vision (1709)

The Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)
The one of Ireland who attacks the reality of bodies does not seem to bring forward suitable reasons, nor does he explain himself sufficiently. --Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
Berkeley's effort, in the Principles--as well as in his other writings--is directed to recasting the picture of the world and the account of knowledge in such a fashion that knowledge will assuredly be real. --Seymour Cain
A favorite target for professional philosophers, Berkeley's arguments are popularly associated with the view that 'everything exists in the mind'. -- Raphael and McLeish

also

Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713) Jonathan Bennett | Jaimar Conte | Daniel Kern

John GAY (1685-1732) The Online Books Page | Poem Hunter Luminarium
an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera (1728), a ballad opera. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names. --Wikipedia

The Beggar's Opera (1728)

Marguerite DE LAUNAY (1684-1750, baronne de Staal) The Online Books Page
a French author. --Wikipedia

Memoirs (Memoires, c. 1755)
They are extremely amusing, and although their historical accuracy has been challenged her portraits of persons are vivid and convincing and her style won the commendation of the best French literary critics. --J. A. Hammerton

George FARQUHAR (1677-1707) The Online Books Page
an Irish dramatist. He is noted for his contributions to late Restoration comedy --Wikipedia

The Recruiting Officer (1706)

The Beaux' Strategem (1707)
One of the most revived of 18th-century plays, this marks the end of Restoration drama and the beginning of modern dramatic sensibility. --Raphael and McLeish

Joseph ADDISON (1672–1719) The Online Books Page post
an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. --Wikipedia

The Vision of Mirza (September 1, 1711)

The Spectator (1711-1712, 1714; with Richard Steele, 1672–1729)
- The Spectator: The Spectator Project Jamie Pratt essay
One of its functions was to provide readers with educated, topical talking points, and advice in how to carry on conversations and social interactions in a polite manner. --Wikipedia
- Richard Steele: The Online Books Page
an Irish writer and politician --Wikipedia

William CONGREVE (1670-1729) The Online Books Page
an English playwright and poet. --Wikipedia

The Old Bachelor (1693)

Love for Love (1695)

The Mourning Bride (1697)

The Way of the World (1700)
Superb comedy, in which plot is to wit (in words of play) 'as a dead whiting's eye to a pearl of orient'. --Raphael and McLeish

Giambattista VICO (Giovanni Battista Vico 1668-1744) The Online Books Page Robert Miner review | Randall E. Auxier essay
an Italian political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, and jurist. He criticised the expansion and development of rationalism and was an apologist of classical antiquity. --Wikipedia

New Science (Scienza Nuova, 1725)
His revolutionary move is to have denied the doctrine of a timeless natural law the truths of which could have been known in principle to any man, at any time, anywhere. --Isaiah Berlin

Autobiography (Autobiografia, 1725-28)
One learns by reading it how a man deprived of skills that could help him to become prominent in a competitive society can bravely construct an image of the self in which all the deep thoughts, all the world's dreams, are mirrored. --Dante Della-Terza

Jonathan SWIFT (1667-1745) The Online Books Page | Great Books and Classics Kenneth Muir fan site post
an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. --Wikipedia

Resolutions When I Come to Be Old (1699)

Meditations Upon a Broomstick (1703-1710)

Battle of the Books (1704)

A Tale of a Tub (1704)

Thoughts on Various Subjects (1706)

Argument against Abolishing Christianity (1708-1711)

Critical Essay upon the Faculties of Mind (1709)

Letter to Alexander Pope (Sept. 29, 1725)

Gulliver's Travels (1726)
The prevalent view is strange because there are few books which are more adult in their meaning or more devoid of the qualities of simple entertainment that are usually associated with children's literature. --Peter Wolff
The book is an account of four imaginary voyages and was inspired by the immense popularity of travel narratives, real and fictitious, during Swift's age... --Robert B. Downs

On Time (1727)
Ever eating, never cloying, / All-devouring, all-destroying / Never finding full repast, / Till I eat the world at last.

Essay on Modern Education (1728)

A Modest Proposal (1729)
Swift's starting point is that common humanity is lost, and he makes it follow logically from this that it would be a good idea for the poor to sell, and the rich to buy, their children for food --Andre Gushurst-Moore

On Poetry: A Rhapsody (1733)

On the Death of Dr. Swift (1739)

Thoughts on Religion (1765)

Journal to Stella (1766, 1768)

Guru GOBIND Singh (1666–1708) The Online Books Page
the tenth of the ten Sikh Gurus, the eleventh guru being the living perpetual Guru, Guru Granth Sahib (the sacred text of Sikhism). --Wikipedia

Dasam Granth Sri Dasam | Kawaldeep Singh fan site
a scripture of Sikhism, containing much of the texts attributed to tenth Sikh guru, Guru Gobind Singh. Dasam Granth is separate granth and should not be confused with the Guru Granth Sahib. --Wikipedia

Daniel DEFOE (1661-1731) The Online Books Page post
an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy, now most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel... He was also a pioneer of economic journalism. --Wikipedia

Robinson Crusoe (1719)
Virtues of forthright style are seldom virtuous in critical circles, but Defoe's capacity for creating suspension of disbelief bypasses aesthetics. --Raphael and McLeish
Such a book as Robinson Crusoe never was written, and never will be written again. I have tried that book for years--generally in combination with a pipe of tobacco--and I have found it my friend in need in all the necessities of this mortal life. --Gabriel Betteredge, The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins

Journal of the Plague Year (1722)
brilliantly impersonates an eye-witness account. --Raphael and McLeish

Moll Flanders (1722)

A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain (1724–27)
what makes the book so much fun for the ordinary reader are its anecdotes, its odd bits of social history, its glimpses of Defoe's personality, and its sturdy plain prose. --Michael Dirda

CHIKAMATSU Monzaemon (1653-1725) The Online Books Page | Japanese Text Initiative
a Japanese dramatist of joruri, the form of puppet theater that later came to be known as bunraku, and the live-actor drama, kabuki. --Wikipedia

Plays (1683-1721)
Plays written by Japan's leading dramatist for the popular puppet theater, performed as well in the Kubuki theater, which are mainly concerned with conflict between love and duty in the lives of city-dwelling commoners and low-ranking samurai. --A Guide to Oriental Classics

Thomas OTWAY (1652-1685) The Online Books Page
an English dramatist of the Restoration period --Wikipedia

Venice Preserv'd (1682)

William DAMPIER (1651-1715) The Online Books Page
the first Englishman to explore parts of what is today Australia, and the first person to circumnavigate the world three times. --Wikipedia

A New Voyage Round the World (1697)

Francois FENELON (1651-1715) The Online Books Page post
a French Roman Catholic archbishop, theologian, poet and writer. He today is remembered mostly as the author of The Adventures of Telemachus --Wikipedia

The Existence of God (Traité de l'existence de Dieu)
the first part of which had been published in 1712 without Fénelon's knowledge. The second part appeared only in 1718, after its author's death. --Catholic Encyclopedia (1917)

Madame D'AULNOY (1650/1651–1705) The Online Books Page | Sur La Lune
a French writer known for her fairy tales. When she termed her works contes de fees (fairy tales), she originated the term that is now generally used for the genre. --Wikipedia

Fairy Tales (Les Contes des Fees, 1697)
if only for her unforgettable and erotically charged 'The Yellow Dwarf'... --Michael Dirda

New Tales, or Fairies in Fashion (Contes Nouveaux ou Les Fees a la Mode, 1698)

KONG Shangren (1648-1718) [K'ung Shang-jen] The Online Books Page
a Qing Dynasty dramatist and poet --Wikipedia

The Peach Blossom Fan (Taohua shan, 1699)
...an important Ming k'un-ch'u drama. --A Guide to Oriental Classics

John WILMOT (1647-1680, 2nd Earl of Rochester) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation
an English poet and courtier of King Charles II's Restoration court.... Rochester was the embodiment of the new era, and he is as well known for his rakish lifestyle as his poetry --Wikipedia

Selected Works (2004)

Pierre BAYLE (1647-1706) The Online Books Page
a French philosopher and writer... As a forerunner of the Encyclopedists and an advocate of the principle of the toleration of divergent beliefs, his works subsequently influenced the development of the Enlightenment. --Wikipedia

Historical and Critical Dictionary ( Dictionaire historique et critique, 1695-1697; enlarged 1702)

HONG Sheng (1646-1704)

The Palace of Eternal Life or The Palace of Eternal Youth (Ch'ang-sheng tian, c. 1688)
The performance is focused on the everlasting love story of Emperor Ming of the Tang Dynasty ... and his favorite consort Lady Yang --Wikipedia

Gottfried Wilhelm LEIBNIZ (1646-1716) The Online Books Page Jan Cover fan site | Markku Roinila fan site | Donald Rutherford fan site The Leibniz Review
a German mathematician and philosopher. He occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy. --Wikipedia

Thoughts on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas (1684)

Discourse on Metaphysics (Discours de metaphysique, 1686)

Animadversions on Descartes' Principles of Philosophy (1692)

On the Ultimate Origination of Things (1697)

New Essays Concerning Human Understanding (Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain, 1704)

Theodicy (Theodicee, 1710)
It appears that the combination of infinite plenitude and intelligible laws lies at the heart of Leibniz's system, for it was part of the justification of his famous claim that the actual world is the best possible world. --Laurence Carlin

Monadology (Monadologie, 1714)
Each of us has a place in the marvellous metaphysical system of the mathematical genius of 17th-century rationalism... . --Raphael and McLeish

Principles of Nature and Grace (1714)

On the Universal Science: Characteristics (Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, VII, 205, 1875-1890)

Letters to Samuel Clarke (in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence 1956)

Jean de LA BRUYERE (1645-1696) The Online Books Page
a French philosopher and moralist. --Wikipedia

Characters (Caracteres, 1688)

Matsuo BASHO (1644-1694) The Online Books Page Gary Barnes fan site
the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Basho was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku --Wikipedia
New genres of poetry by the master of haiku, and one of the greatest of all Japanese poets. --A Guide to Oriental Classics

The Narrow Road to the Interior (Oku no Hosomichi, 1694) Nine Translations of the Opening Paragraph
he deliberately visited places that had been hallowed by other poets. In Japanese, these special poetic nodes are called utamakura; the point in visiting them is to relive the experiences of one’s literary predecessors and hope to be moved to write poetry on the same sites. --Grant L. Voth

Haiku Frog Haiku, Thirty Translations
...a haiku by Matuso Basho is worth all of the long didactic poems from the European baroque. --Philip Ward

William PENN (1644-1718) The Online Books Page
an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom --Wikipedia

Some Fruits of Solitude In Reflections And Maxims (1682)

Ihara SAIKAKU (1642-1693) The Online Books Page
a Japanese poet and creator of the "floating world" genre of Japanese prose --Wikipedia
Fiction, chiefly about love and money in the new culture of townspeople in seventeenth-century Japan, by the greatest prose writer of the premodern period. --A Guide to Oriental Classics

The Life of an Amorous Woman (Koshoku ichidai onna, 1686)

Isaac NEWTON (1642-1727) The Online Books Page William Newman fan site | Stephen David Snobelen fan site post
an English physicist and mathematician who is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. --Wikipedia
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid from sight; / God said: 'Let Newton be', and all was light. --Alexander Pope

Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, 1687)
It is the combination       Law of Motion plus Law of Attraction       which constitutes that marvelous edifice of thought which makes it possible to calculate the past and future states of a system from the state obtaining at one particular moment, in so far as the events take place under the influence of the forces of gravity alone. --Albert Einstein

Opticks (1704)
Newton's method in this book is strictly experimental. --Peter Wolff

PU Songling (1640-1715) The Online Books Page
a Qing Dynasty Chinese writer --Wikipedia

Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio (Liaozhai Zhiyi, 1766)
An enormously popular collection of tales ... which combines moral sayings with fantasies of devils, ghosts and magic. --Philip Ward

William WYCHERLEY (1640-1716) The Online Books Page
an English dramatist of the Restoration period --Wikipedia

The Country Wife (1675)
Savage but nonetheless comic satire of Restoration--and human foibles. ... Important for brilliant comic dialogue, unheard of on the English stage before. --Raphael and McLeish

The Plain Dealer (1676)

Jean RACINE (1639-1699) The Online Books Page post
a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France (along with Moliere and Corneille), and an important literary figure in the Western tradition. Racine was primarily a tragedian --Wikipedia

Andromache (1668)
Love, revenge, motherhood and the aftermath of the Trojan War, in the poetic mix of passion and formality that is Racine's genius. --Stanley Hoffman

Britannicus (1669)

Phaedra (1677)
what drives the action forward ineluctably is her inner state, nothing more than her desire for the crime, a state which horrifies her but which she can do nothing about, and which also drags down all the other characters with her, who are similarly impotent before forces they can do nothing about. --Anthony O'Hear

Athalie (1691)

Thomas TRAHERNE (1636/7-1674) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets
an English poet, clergyman, theologian, and religious writer. --Wikipedia

Thanksgivings (in A Serious and Patheticall Contemplation of the Mercies of God, 1699)

The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne 1636?–1674 (1903)

Centuries of Meditations (1908)

Traherne's Poems of Felicity (1910)

Nicolas BOILEAU-Despreaux (1636-1711) The Online Books Page
a French poet and critic. Boileau did much to reform the prevailing form of French poetry --Wikipedia

The Art of Poetry (L'Art poetique, 1694)

Lutrin (Le Lutrin, 1694)

George ETHEREGE (1635-1691) The Online Books Page
an English dramatist. ...Etherege holds a distinguished place in English literature as one of the "big five" of Restoration comedy, inventing the comedy of manners... Etherege's portraits of fops and beaux are considered to be the best of their kind --Wikipedia

The Man of Mode, or, Sir Fopling Flutter (1676)

Robert HOOKE (1635-1703) The Online Books Page
an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath. ... he inspired the use of microscopes for scientific exploration with his book, Micrographia. --Wikipedia

Micrographia (1665)

Madame de LA FAYETTE (1634-1693) The Online Books Page
a French writer, the author of La Princesse de Cleves, France's first historical novel and one of the earliest novels in literature. --Wikipedia

The Princess of Cleves (La Princesse de Cleves 1678)
a work of the most finely considered literary art, dominated by its leading character's severe emotional reserve, her scrupulous honesty, and an inner torment that is all the more lacerating for being set in an elegant balletlike world of the most complete immorality. --Michael Dirda

Samuel PEPYS (1633-1703) The Online Books Page | Phil Gyford searchable etext | Twitter feed post
an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. --Wikipedia
'And so to bed,' wrote Samuel Pepys, / And under blankets slowly crepys; / His wife, poor wretch, stays up and wepys, / While wayward Sam snores on and slepys. / And that is how a source book kepys / Pronouncing Mr. Samuel Pepys. // The Pepyses of modern day / Insist that this is not the way: / 'Us cats prefer to call it Pepp-iss; / It's real cool, man, and like the heppes!' / The outcome of the book's misstep is / A bunch of angry, red hot Pepys. --Gerald Kloss

The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1659-69)
Splendid historical document covering the years 1660-69 but even more compelling for the self-portrait of Pepys: an engaging, hard-working, sensuous man. --Raphael and McLeish

Baruch SPINOZA (1632-1677) The Online Books Page Joseph B. Yesselman fan site Alan Mittleman essay | post
later Benedict de Spinoza — was a Dutch philosopher.... By laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and, arguably, the universe, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. --Wikipedia
a God-intoxicated man. --Novalis

Letter to William de Blyenbergh (January 5, 1665)

Theologico-Political Treatise (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 1670)
Unfortunately, as long as men are swayed by passions, we require the state to insure our security. Spinoza imagines a kind of social contract, a la Hobbes, as the start of government, but proves that a democratic republic best maintains the rights of all its citizens. --Michael Dirda

Letter to Henry Oldenburg (November 1675)

Political Treatise (Tractatus Politicus, 1675-76)

Ethics (Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata, 1677)
Spinoza still defines for me 'ethics' in its fullest and most proper sense. --Richard R. Niebuhr
aims to discover a way of life that would provide just such 'continuous, supreme, and unending happiness'. Alas, many people have been put off this inquiry because it is organized like Euclid's Elements. --Michael Dirda

Anton van LEEUWENHOEK (1632-1723) The Online Books Page
a Dutch tradesman and scientist. ... He is best known for his work on the improvement of the microscope and for his contributions towards the establishment of microbiology. --Wikipedia

Letters to the Royal Society of England (Epistolae ad Societatem Regiam Anglicam 1719)
Of the original discoveries credited to Leeuwenhoek, the most celebrated is that of the existence of bacteria and of protozoan life in the mouth and in water--his demonstration that the world is filled with a vast teeming universe of 'little animals'. --Robert B. Downs

John LOCKE (1631-1704) The Online Books Page post
an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers --Wikipedia

A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) Constitution Society
Locke not only says that the use of state power to enforce religious uniformity is morally and religiously wrong. He also says that it is a danger to the security of civil society. --Seymour Cain

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
...Locke vigorously opposes exclusive reliance on an 'inner light' as warrant for religious belief. He acknowledges the existence and validity of revelation--direct communication from God to man--but he insists that revelation cannot be contrary to reason. Indeed, reason and revelation are closely bound together. --Seymour Cain
cast doubt upon the possibility of achieving universally valid knowledge --William H. McNeill
Locke's forthright 'Essay' pioneered the tradition of exploring, by empirical observation and analysis, the supposed limits of our understanding. --Raphael and McLeish

Two Essays Concerning Civil Government (1690)
Such power and the government that wields it comes into being, Locke maintains, as the result of a compact made by persons who previously lived in a non-political condition. --Peter Wolff
Government came into being by common consent, created by the people through a social contract for the purpose of protecting and preserving life, liberty, and property against internal and external dangers. --Robert B. Downs

Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) Nijmegen University

Letter to Samuel Bold (May 16, 1699)

John DRYDEN (1631-1700) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets Matthew Reynolds review
an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made Poet Laureate in 1668. --Wikipedia
Between the organ roar of Milton and the Mozartian subtlety of Pope, Dryden's verse at its best can hardly be bettered in English; it has the qualities of perfect prose, and so does his prose. --Raphael and McLeish

Annus Mirabilis (1667)

Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668)

Song for St. Cecilia's Day (1677)

All for Love (1678)

Absalom and Achitophel (1681)

Religio Laici (1682)

To the Memory of Mr. John Oldham (1684)

The Hind and the Panther (1687)

Alexander's Feast (1687)

Epigrams on Milton (1688)

Preface to the Fables (of Chaucer) (1700)

The Secular Masque (1700)

Christiaan HUYGENS (1629-1695) The Online Books Page MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
a prominent Dutch mathematician and natural philosopher. He is known particularly as an astronomer, physicist, probabilist and horologist. --Wikipedia

Treatise on Light (Traite de la lumiere, 1690)
...Huygens' wave theory won acceptance over Newton's corpuscular [particle] theory during the 19th century. --Peter Wolff

also

Saturn's Ring (1928 J. H. Walden translation) MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive (from Systema Saturnium, 1659) Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Charles PERRAULT (1628-1703) The Online Books Page
a French author and member of the Académie française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales. --Wikipedia

Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals: Tales of Mother Goose (Histoires ou Contes du Temps passe: Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye, 1697)
gave us, among others, 'Puss in Boots' and 'Beauty and the Beast'... --Michael Dirda

John BUNYAN (1628-1688) The Online Books Page
an English Christian writer and preacher --Wikipedia

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) Jaffe-Notier satire

The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)
No refinement could surpass the tinker who, writing in his prison cell, earned the applause of a believing world, in expressing the emotions of the faithful Puritan, thinking only of his own salvation. --Max Weber
The man in rags is the hero, Christian; his pilgrimage represents the Christian life; and the road he travels, straight and narrow, leads him through mud, through green fields, over rocks and up and down hills--all indicative of the complicated moral life of man. --Robert B. Downs

Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1681)

Robert BOYLE (1627-1691) The Online Books Page
an Irish 17th-century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor. ... He is best known for Boyle's law, which describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system. --Wikipedia

The Sceptical Chymist (1661)

Jacques-Benigne BOSSUET (1627-1704) The Online Books Page
a French bishop and theologian, renowned for his sermons and other addresses. ... widely considered to be one of the most influential homiliticians of all time. --Wikipedia

Funeral Orations (1689)

John AUBREY (1626-1697) The Online Books Page
an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer. --Wikipedia

Brief Lives (1696)
In his pages the gods of Renaissance poetry, philosophy, and science reveal themselves as sweet and silly human beings much like ourselves. --Michael Dirda

Hans Jakob Chrisoffel von GRIMMELSHAUSEN (c. 1625-1676) The Online Books Page
a German author. ... Grimmelshausen's work is greatly influenced by previous utopian and travel literature --Wikipedia

Simplicius Simplicissimus (Der Abenteuerlich Simplicissimus teutsch, 1669)
an absorbing adventure novel of the picaresque genre, the first Robinson Crusoe story in German, an ironic commentary on human failings and foibles set against the Thirty Years' War, and finally a mature and good-humoured statement of the vanity of earthly goods and aspirations... --Philip Ward

- (H. Weissenborn and L. Macdonald translation 1964)

George FOX (1624-1691) The Online Books Page
an English Dissenter and a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. --Wikipedia

George Fox's Journal (1694)

Blaise PASCAL (1623-1662) The Online Books Page Notable Names Database | MacTutor History of Mathematics post
a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. --Wikipedia

New Experiments Concerning the Vacuum (Nouvelles experiences touchant le Vide, 1647)

Account of the Great Experiment Concerning the Equilibrium of Fluids (Recit de la grande experience de l'equilibre des liqueurs, 1648)
He rejects any explanation in terms of ultimate ends or purposes, or any notion that nature had desires or aversions. --Peter Wolff

Treatise on the Vacuum (Traite du vide, 1651)

Letter to Fermat on the Theory of Probabilities (July 29, 1654)

Letters to a Provincial (Lettres provinciales, 1656-57)

Of the Geometrical Spirit (De l'Esprit geometrique et de l'Art de persuader, 1658)

Treatise on the Weight of the Mass of Air (Traite de la pesanteur de la masse de l'air, 1663)

Thoughts (Pensees, 1670)
belong to that class of religious writings called 'apologetics'. Indeed, the Pensees comprise notes for a work which Pascal intended to call an Apology for the Christian Religion. --Seymour Cain
But the power of Pascal's writing derives not from intellectual analysis, but from the depth of his psychological insights into our moral and intellectual infirmities, and also from his conviction of the living reality of God and of Jesus Christ: "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of". --Anthony O'Hear

MOLIERE (Jean Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-1673) The Online Books Page post
a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. --Wikipedia
When I desire to read a play of Moliere I first look to see if [Richard] Wilbur has translated it... . --Charles Van Doren

The Affected Ladies (Ridiculous Precieuses 1659)

The School for Husbands (L'Ecole des Maris 1661)

The School for Wives (L'Ecole des Femmes 1662)

Tartuffe (Le Tartuffe 1664)

Love Doctor (L'Amour Medecin 1664)

Don Juan (Dom Juan 1665)

The Misanthrope (Le Misanthrope 1666)
Rhymed verse not being too popular on the English-speaking stage, Moliere is often represented by shoddy translations which capture plot but nothing of style or atmosphere. This may account for his relative neglect. --Raphael and McLeish

The Doctor in Spite of Himself (Le Medecin malgre lui 1666)

The Sicilian (Le Sicilien 1667)

The Miser (L'Avare 1668)

The Would-Be Gentleman (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme 1670)
Redescription can be intriguing and useful, and succeeding generations must, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, rename their beasts. Moliere revealed the comic possibilities of this when M. Jourdain discovered that all his life he had been speaking prose. --Saul Bellow
the favourite with modern audiences, for it shows a social climber in all his absurdity but does not suggest that he is evil or at all reprehensible, merely a lasting figure of fun, or perhaps even to be pitied... --Philip Ward

Scapin's Schemings (Les Fourberies de Scapin 1671)

The Learned Ladies (Les Femmes Savantes 1672)

The Imaginary Invalid (Le Malade Imaginaire 1673)

Henry VAUGHAN (1622-1695) The Online Books Page | Poetry Foundation | Luminarium
a Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet. --Wikipedia

Silex Scintillans (1655 "Sparkling Flint")

Andrew MARVELL (1621-1678) The Online Books Page
an English metaphysical poet and politician... As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert. --Wikipedia

Miscellaneous Poems (1681)
verbal fireworks have perfect phrasing, intense visual resonance; he freshens and sharpens the senses. --Raphael and McLeish

Jean de LA FONTAINE (1621-1695) The Online Books Page
the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. --Wikipedia

Fables (Fable choisies mises en vers, 1668-1694)
Human failings and foibles are criticized gently, and the Epicurean wit of La Fontaine is at odds with the solemn morality of his time. --Philip Ward

John EVELYN (1620-1706) The Online Books Page Keith Thomas review
an English writer, gardener and diarist. --Wikipedia

John Evelyn's Diary (Memoirs Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, 1818)
Posterity-conscious diary contains brillian portraits of Restoration figures. --Raphael and McLeish

Lucy HUTCHINSON (1620-1681) The Online Books Page
an English biographer as well as probably the first translator into English of the complete text of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura --Wikipedia

Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson (1806)

October 23, 1619 John Donne visits Johannes Kepler in Linz, Austria --Jeremy Bernstein

The Golden Lotus or The Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei, 1618) [Chin P'ing Mei] The Online Books Page
a Chinese naturalistic novel composed in vernacular Chinese during the late Ming Dynasty. --Wikipedia
The first Chinese novel to depict urban domestic life in naturalistic terms ... --A Guide to Oriental Classics

Richard LOVELACE (1618-1658) The Online Books Page
an English poet in the seventeenth century. He was a cavalier poet who fought on behalf of the king during the Civil War. His best known works are "To Althea, from Prison," and "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres." --Wikipedia

Lucasta (1649)

Lucasta: Postume Poems (1659-1660)

Richard BAXTER (1615-1691) The Online Books Page | Christian Classics Ethereal Library
an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymn-writer, theologian, and controversialist. --Wikipedia

Reliquiæ Baxterianae: or, Mr. Richard Baxter's Narrative of the Most Memorable Passages of His Life and Times (1696)

Richard CRASHAW (1613-1649) The Online Books Page | Luminarium | Poetry Foundation
an English poet, styled "the divine," and known as one of the central figures associated with the Metaphysical poets in 17th Century English literature. --Wikipedia

Steps To The Temple Delights of The Muses And Other Poems (1904)

Jeremy TAYLOR (1613-1667) The Online Books Page Charles Wohlers fan site
a cleric in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. --Wikipedia

The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650)

The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651)

Francois de LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (1613-1680) The Online Books Page post
a noted French author of maxims and memoirs. --Wikipedia

Memoirs (1662)
exhibit La Rochefoucauld as a master of terse and incisive phrase. --J. A. Hammerton

Maxims (Reflexions ou sentences et maximes morales, 1665)
shocking to persons who live in a state of illusion about themselves. --Edmund Gosse

KHUSHAL Khan Khattak (1613-1689) Afghanistan Online
a Pashtun poet, warrior and scholar, and chief of the Khattak tribe of the Pashtuns. ... Khushal is considered the "father of Pashto literature" and the national poet of Afghanistan. --Wikipedia

Poems from the Diwan of Khushhal Khan Khattak (1965)

Samuel BUTLER (1612-1680) The Online Books Page Samuel Johnson biography
a poet and satirist. --Wikipedia

Hudibras (1663, 1664, and 1678)

Evliya CELEBI (1611-1682) The Online Books Page
an Ottoman Turk who travelled through the territory of the Ottoman Empire and neighboring lands over a period of forty years. --Wikipedia

Seyahatname (10 volumes, 1630-1672, "book of travels")
observed life in the Middle East and Eastern Europe (as far as Vienna), starting in 1631-7... --Philip Ward

Edward HYDE (1609-1674, 1st Earl of Clarendon) The Online Books Page
an English statesman, historian, and maternal grandfather of two English monarchs, Queen Mary II and Queen Anne --Wikipedia

History of the Rebellion in England (1717)

John MILTON (1608-1674) The Online Books Page | Luminarium | Poetry Foundation | Academy of American Poets Kevin J. T. Creamer fan site | Kenneth Muir fan site Samuel Johnson life | post
an English poet, polemicist, man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. --Wikipedia
Once the optical ability to read passes, the lucky ones have had others read to them. Milton, blind at forty, had his daughters. --Steve Leveen

To the Lord Generall Cromwell (May 1632)

Arcades (1632)

On Shakespeare (1632)

Comus (1634)

At a Solemn Musick (1634)

Areopagitica (1644)
Censorship, he asserted, is the worst possible indignity to a free and knowing spirit, an insult to the nation, and an act hostile and detrimental to the survival of truth. --Robert B. Downs

Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)

Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643)

Of Education (1644)

L'Allegro (Poems, 1645)

Il'Penseroso (Poems, 1645)

Lycidas (Poems, 1645)

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (Poems, 1645)

On Time (Poems, 1645)

The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)

The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)

Paradise Lost (1667)
So Milton had to make Satan attractive at first, or neither we nor the devils would ever be tempted by him. --Anthony O'Hear

Paradise Regained (1671)

Samson Agonistes (1671)

Sonnets (Poems, 2nd Ed. 1673)

Thomas BROWNE (1605-1682) The Online Books Page
an English author of varied works which reveal his wide learning in diverse fields including science and medicine, religion and the esoteric. --Wikipedia

Religio Medici (1643)
it is his status as a learned doctor, an expert in the practical application of reason, which lends authority to the move he makes again and again in Religio Medici: the subordination of reason to faith. --Tobias Gregory

On Dreams (c. 1650)

Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658)
Examining the urns and their human ashes leads him to consider how past civilisations buried their dead, to assess the relative virtues of burning and burying, to note the variety of funerary monuments, to compare the beliefs about the afterlife on which these various burial practices were based. --Tobias Gregory

The Garden of Cyrus (1658)

Christian Morals (1716)

Pierre CORNEILLE (1606-1684) The Online Books Page
a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. He has been called "the founder of French tragedy" --Wikipedia
... Corneille was educated at a Jesuit school, and the Latin-based training shaped the young dramatist in many ways, from the discipline of verse composition at an early age, to concepts of order, and plots from Roman history and legend. --Philip Ward

The Cid (Le Cid, 1636-37)
The famous riposte 'Je ne dois qu'a moi seul toute ma renommee' was ill-judged and untrue, for he had indeed taken the course, normal then and earlier, of deriving the structure of a play from a predecessor, in this case Guillen de Castro's Las Mocedades del Cid (1618). --Philip Ward

Cinna (1639)
...a play in praise of generosity. --Philip Ward

Horace (1640)
...the triumph of patriotism... --Philip Ward

Polyeucte (1642)
...a tragedy of Christian martrydom... --Philip Ward

Rodogune (1645)

Nicomede (1651)

It is often said that modern times began in 1600. --Peter Wolff

/\ 17th Century

\/ 1401-1600 | 1701-1750 /\

Revised July 2, 2014.

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