Book excerpt: The two-volume Encyclopedia of British Writers: 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries provides essential, curriculum-based information on approximately 600 major British writers - from William Shakespeare and John Milton to Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope - who flourished in Britain between the 16th and the 18th centuries. All accessible entries include important details about the author's life, a synopsis of the writer's major works, and suggestions for further reading. 16th- and 17th-Century British Writers; This volume covers Aphra Behn, John Bunyan, Robert Burton, Thomas Campion, Margaret Cavendish, Richard Crashaw, Samuel Daniel, John Dryden, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Andrew Marvell, John Milton, Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, John Suckling, Henry Vaughan, Izaak Walton, Mary Wroth, Thomas Wyatt, and many more. 18th-Century British Writers; This volume covers George Berkeley, James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Robert Burns, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, John Gay, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Gray, David Hume, Samuel Johnson, Mary Wortley Montagu, Alexander Pope, Matthew Prior, Ann Radcliffe, Christopher Smart, Laurence Sterne, Jonathan Swift, Horace Walpole, Mary Wollstonecraft, and many more.