The Way of the World, originally produced in 1700, is Congreve's best-known play. In this play, many critics feel, Congreve created the highest accomplishment of Restoration comedy and of contemporary social criticism.

Alexander Pope is, to many peoples' minds, the greatest wit that England ever produced. He generally wrote his works in "heroic couplets," or rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter. Although he expressed his serious ideas about religion, philosophy, and literature in his Essay on Man and Essay on Criticism, his long poem The Rape of the Lock is a sophisticated, funny, rewarding satire of the upper-class morals of his—and Congreve's—time.

The best and most comprehensive picture of daily life in Restoration London is not a play or a poem but a long journal. The diaries of Samuel Pepys describe in vivid and entertaining detail the social...