Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison

by Thomas Babington Macaulay (Editor), Thomas Marc Parrott, C. Alphonso Smith (Creator)

The essays comprising this volume are eminently literary. They are the most distinctively literary of Macaulay’s essays. Many of Macaulay’s better known essays, such as the one on Clive, are historical and biographical, and yet are of unusual literary value. But the teacher of English literature will recognize at once the immense gains to the student of a comparative study of Milton and Addison, the two writers who stand highest in their respective departments of literature - especially when that study is directed by Macaulay.

Paperback

First published December 9, 2008

About the author

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay PC was an English poet, historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer, and on British history. He also held political office as Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841 and Paymaster-General between 1846 and 1848.

As a young man he composed the ballads Ivry and The Armada, which he later included as part of Lays of Ancient Rome, a series of very popular ballads about heroic episodes in Roman history which he composed in India and published in 1842.

During the 1840s he began work on his most famous work, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, publishing the first two volumes in 1848. At first, he had planned to bring his history down to the reign of George III. After publication of his first two volumes, his hope was to complete his work with the death of Queen Anne in 1714. The third and fourth volumes, bringing the history to the Peace of Ryswick, were published in 1855. However, at his death in 1859, he was working on the fifth volume. This, bringing the History down to the death of William III, was prepared for publication by his sister, Lady Trevelyan, after his death.