Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * [Illustration: GEOFFREY CHAUCER From a portrait in Occleve's Poems in the British Museum] Stories of Authors _British and American_ BY EDWIN WATTS CHUBB Professor of English Literature in the Ohio University. _ILLUSTRATED_ New York STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 1910 _All rights reserved_ Copyright, 1910 BY STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1910 Reprinted May, 1910 PREFACE The purpose of this book is to help in making literature and the makers of literature alive and interesting. Few schools have libraries including the bound volumes of the magazines of the past quarter of a century. But what an aid such a collection is to the appreciation of literature! The dignified and abbreviated history of literature cannot indulge in such delightful gossip as is found in the freer essay and fuller biography. To show the excellences of the art and the lovableness of the artist rather than to hunt for defects is the duty and the delight of the teacher of literature. This does not mean, however, that one dare never see the weaker side, the foibles and eccentricities of the man of genius.