Further Reading
- Baird, John D., and Charles Ryskamp, eds., The Poems of William Cowper, Volume III, 1785-1900, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, 413 p. (A collection of Cowper's poems, with commentary and an explanation of sources.)
- Cecil, David, The Stricken Deer, or The Life of Cowper, London: Constable & Co. Ltd., 1929, 303 p. (Biography treating Cowper's life and work within the context of eighteenth-century literature.)
- Cecil, David, Prologue to The Stricken Deer, or the Life of Cowper, pp. 13-29. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1930. (Comments on the poet's relation to eighteenth-century literature and the duality of madness and the mundane in his life.)
- Ellison, Julie, “News, Blues, and Cowper's Busy World,” Modern Language Quarterly 62, no. 3 (2001): 219-37. (Evaluates Cowper as “the earliest and most influential adapter of the newspaper to reflective poetry” in Britain, focusing on his long poem The Task.)
- Hartley, Lodwick, William Cowper: The Continuing Revaluation, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960, 159 p. (A biographical essay on Cowper and a bibliography of criticism from 1895 to 1960.)
- Heller, Deborah, “Cowper's Task and the Writing of a Poet's Salvation,” in SEL: Studies in English Literature 35, No. 3 (Summer 1995): 575-98. (Claims that producing The Task served as a means of achieving mental salvation for Cowper.)
- Hutchings, W. B., “William Cowper and 1789,” in Yearbook of English Studies 19 (1989): 71-93. (Analysis of how the events of 1789 affected Cowper's writing.)
- King, James, and Charles Ryskamp, eds., William Cowper: Selected Letters, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, 236 p. (A compilation of Cowper's letters, with a chronology and a list of letters.)
- Kroitor, Harry P., “The Influence of Popular Science on William Cowper,” Modern Philology 61, no. 4 (May 1964): 281-87. (Considers Cowper's detailed and factual treatment of natural phenomena in his poetry.)
- Newey, Vincent, “William Cowper,” in Handbook to English Romanticism, edited by Jean Raimond and J. R. Watson, pp. 83-91. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. (A concise biography and explanation of Cowper's better-known works.)
- Newey, Vincent, “William Cowper and the Condition of England,” in Literature and Nationalism, edited by Vincent Newey and Ann Thompson, pp. 120-139. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991. (Explores Cowper's poetic reflections on current events and historical circumstances, particularly as they relate to a social awareness of England and the British Empire.)
- Nicholson, Norman, William Cowper, Harlow, Essex: Longman Group, 1960, 39 p. (Sympathetic survey of Cowper's life and works, including critical analysis devoted to The Task and a select bibliography.)
- Paxman, David, “Failure as Authority: Poetic Voices and the Muse of Grace in William Cowper's The Task,” in 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era, Vol. 5, edited by Kevin L. Cope, pp. 203-42. New York: AMS Press, 2000. (Probes the satirical and rhetorical contexts of Cowper's multiple narrative personae in The Task as they reflect on received poetic and moral authority in the eighteenth century.)
- Perkins, David, “Cowper's Hares,” Eighteenth-Century Life 20, no. 2 (1996): 57-69. (Psychological and literary examination of Cowper's identification and sympathy with animals.)
- Prestman, Martin, Cowper's Task: Structure and Influence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, 217 p. (A book-by-book analysis of The Task, with a comparison to Wordsworth's Prelude.)
- Spacks, Patricia Meyer, “The Soul's Imaginings: Daniel Defoe, William Cowper,” PMLA 91, no. 3 (May 1976): 420-35. (Compares Cowper's poem “The Castaway” and Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe as representations of spiritual autobiography.)
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