The book delves into the concept of the literary canon, examining how specific works attain high cultural status while others are overlooked. Through the analysis of Shakespeare and Aphra Behn, it highlights the complexities and challenges surrounding the canonization process, prompting readers to reconsider the criteria that elevate certain authors and texts above others.
Daniel Defoe was one of the most important and best-known writers of the eighteenth century but there is a feeling among scholars that the Defoe 'canon' is a remarkably strange and not very satisfactory construction. Between 1790, when the first bibliography of Defoe appeared, and 1971, when J.R. Moore published the second edition of his Checklist, the canon had swollen from just over a hundred items to 570. A large proportion of these attributions had been made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on the basis of features of style, 'favourite phrases' and resemblance to Defoe's known views. This book is a list of all the items in Moore's Checklist (the current authority on the Defoe canon) that at present the authors consider questionable with in each case a note as to who was the first attributer, a brief synopsis and an explanation of the reasons for doubting the ascription.
Originally published in 1948, this book discusses various aspects of the life and works of the novelist Samuel Butler, author of Erehwon.