Prefaces and Prologues To Famous Books
"Each of the prefaces and prologues in this volume is a complete work of literature unto itself, offering a unique insight to the thoughts of its author."

William Caxton
The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy
Title and Prologue to Book I
Epilogue to Book II
Epilogue to Book III
Epilogue to Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers
Prologue to Golden Legend
Prologue to Caton (1483)
Epilogue to Aesop (1483)
Proem to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Prologue to Malory’s King Arthur (1485)

John Calvin
Dedication of the Institutes of the Christian Religion - General Syllabus

Nicolaus Copernicus
Dedication of the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies to Pope Paul III

John Knox
Preface to The History of the Reformation In Scotland

Edmund Spenser
Prefatory Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh On The Faerie Queene

Sir Walter Raleigh
Preface to the History of the World

Francis Bacon
Proœmium of the Instauratio Magna
Epistle Dedicatory to the Instauratio Magna
Preface to the Instauratio Magna
The Plan of the Instauratio Magna
Preface to the Novum Organum

Henrie Condell and Iohn Heminge
Preface to the First Folio Edition of Shakespeare’s Plays

Sir Isaac Newton
Preface to the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

John Dryden
Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern

Henry Fielding
Preface to Joseph Andrews

Samuel Johnson
Preface to the English Dictionary
Letter to the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield
Preface to Shakespeare

J. W. von Goethe
Introduction to the Propylaen

William Wordsworth
Advertisement to Lyrical Ballads
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Appendix to Lyrical Ballads
Preface to Poems
Essay Supplementary to Preface

Victor Hugo
Preface to Cromwell

Walt Whitman
Preface to Leaves of Grass

Hippolyte Adolphe Taine
Introduction to the History of English Literature