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_A SUPPLEMENT TO TEXT-BOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE_
WILLIAM J. HARRIS, A.R.S.I. BOROUGH LIBRARIAN, BROMLEY
LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO
This bibliography has been compiled with the view of supplementing existing text books on English literary history, and assisting students in preparing for examinations in Bibliography and Literature. It will also be found of service to those who are working for the professional examinations of the Library Association.
Students of literature, more particularly of English literature, experience much difficulty in tracing the outside influences which at various periods, or, perhaps, speaking more correctly, at all periods, have affected or moulded our literature. The great foreign classics have exercised a direct and decided influence upon English literature and the object of this bibliography is to give in concise form the authors and titles, translations and dates of the first English translations of the chief foreign authors, and incidentally to enable students to note the effect of such translations on the works of many of our great imaginative writers.
So far as it has been possible to discover, no work of this kind exists in this country. Students are frequently reminded of the special need for such a bibliography as this, and to all interested in the subject it should serve a useful purpose, and perhaps help to fill a gap in literary bibliography.
Students have been asked such questions as--give the date of the first translation into English of _Don Quixote_, of _The Arabian Nights_, Boccaccio's _Decameron_, or of Homer. Such questions as these naturally involve some inquiry and research on the part of the student, and occupy a larger amount of time than is necessary for the purpose. Hence the necessity for a brief bibliography of this nature, which will show at a glance the first translations into English of the most important foreign classics, and save inquirers the fatigue of searching catalogues, bibliographies and similar works.