English Literature

Előszó

This book was originally written in 195 7, in Kelantan, one of the north-
eastern states of Malaya. I was at the time working as head of the English
Department in the Federal Training College at Kota Bharu, and I recog-
nised that my students, who were of many races and cultures, needed an
easy book to provide them with the historical background which would
make some of their set books more intelligible. The result was this short
history of English literature which, in the thirteen years or so since it
first appeared, has been used fairly widely in Europe as well as in what
used to be the Colonial Empire. It is perhaps discourteous to European
students to make the book still appear to be a kind of tropical production,
but it was written against a background of snakes and jungle drums, and
there seems to me a harmless piquancy in letting these go on hissing and
beating somewhere behind a discussion of Paradise Lost. But other
changes have been necessary, particularly the bringing up to date of the
account of contemporary British literature. I am aware of the unchanged
naiveté of the prose, and of some of the literary judgements made, but all
this can be put right only by the writing of a new book, a task for which
I am not yet ready. The facts remain solid enough, and I hope they will
continue to feed whatever hunger for facts students of English literature
possess. I mean, of course, students at the elementary level. If they learn
a bigger hunger, I trust they will be led to the great Cambridge History
of English Literature, or to the shorter work of Legouis and Cazamien.
A. B.
Bracciano, Italy.
August 1, 1971. Vissza