The English Humourists (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

In 1851 the English novelist and satirist William Makepeace Thackeray delivered a series of lectures in London on the great English humorists of the previous century (including Swift, Congreve, Pope, Hogarth, and Fielding), which he repeated over the next two years while touring the United States. The lectures were received with great acclaim and published in book form in 1853.