This svolume is a collection of critical literary essays on eleven writers, and aims both to make a contribution to the study of English literature, and to offer a concise survey of the question of literary understanding. It approaches this question in a specific and systematic way, considering texts capable of speaking to all ages, capable of telling each one of us something important about ourselves. Spots of Time: Lectures on the English Literary Tradition is recommended for students of English literature, but it will be of considerable use also to those with an interest in some of the most important works of the English literary canon. The essays include: "Marlowe", "Shakespeare", "John Donne", "Samuel Johnson", "Wordsworth", "Keats", "Tennyson", "Swinburne", "Victorian Women Poets", "T. S. Eliot", "Pound".