This volume of the Harvard Classics collects the moments when authors stepped out from behind their work to speak to readers directly. It runs from Caxton’s prologues to Malory and the Canterbury Tales through Calvin’s Institutes, Copernicus, Raleigh’s History of the World, Newton, Dryden, Fielding and Johnson’s Dictionary to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads preface, Hugo and Whitman.
Four centuries of authors explaining themselves, a surprisingly lively way into the books that shaped literature and science. Download the free EPUB.