Longman Anthology of British Literature, The

Description

·   Generous coverage of fiction, drama, and poetry alike.  Major prose works are included in their entirety, together with a wealth of poetry and drama, from a collection of 16^th century sonnets to More’s Utopia to three of Shakespeare’s most widely taught masterpieces–and beyond.

·   Cultural breadth.  Regional as well as metropolitan perspectives, religious as well as secular writing, popular as well as elite productions, classic works, newly recovered texts, and Irish, Welsh, and Scottish writers all combine to represent the full scope of the British literary tradition.

·   Women’s writing.  Extensive selections from a wide range of writers, fully integrated in each period, include such writers as Isabella Whitney, Mary Herbert Countess of Pembroke, Elizabeth I, and Lady Mary Wroth.

·   “Perspectives” sections.  These groupings shed light on the period as a whole and link with immediately surrounding works to help illuminate a theme.

·   “…and Its Time” sections.  These shorter groupings show major works in the context of their own era.  For example, “Pepys Diary and Its Time.”

·   Rich illustration program.  An unrivalled collection of both black-and-white and color illustrations include portraits of major authors as well as images to illustrate artistic and cultural developments.

·   Complete Longer Works.  The Longman Anthology of British Literature contains a wide variety of complete longer works from all periods including Utopia, Othello, King Lear, The Twelfth Night, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, and Paradise Lost.

·         New Fact Sheet. An informative fact sheet opens the volume, providing an easily digestible glimpse of daily life during the early modern period. 

·         New Perspectives groupings of works in cultural context.  Topics and “Perspectives” groupings new to this edition are The Sixteenth Century Sonnet, Early Modern Books, and England, Britain, and the World.  New to this edition, several “Perspectives” sections follow general themes throughout a number of the volumes such as the development of literature, the shifting role of London, and the state of the empire.  The “Perspectives” build on one another and illuminate the evolution of some major concerns of the British world.    

·         New major, classic texts.  In response to instructor’s requests, major additions of important works that are taught frequently in the British Literature course have been added, including William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat (the 1^st English novel), Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, Books 6 and the Two Cantos of Mutability, and William Shakespeare’s Othello and King Lear.  

·         Easier Navigation.  Revised indexes in the frontmatter and endmatter of the book link the Website, Audio CD, Longman Cultural Editions, and main text to make the complete range of resources better integrated and easier to use.

·         New Media Supplement.  A new Web site includes an archive of valuable texts that we were not able to include in the most recent edition, detailed bibliographies, an interactive timeline, and multiple choice comprehension quizzes, discussion questions, and web resources for major selections and authors.  These resources may be accessed by going to www.myliteraturekit.com

·         New Longman Cultural Editions. One at no additional cost when bundled with the anthology, this series of supplemental texts presents key works from every era of the British literary tradition, introduced, annotated, and framed with contextual readings and illustrations by major scholars in the field.  Recent new additions to the series include Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Forster’s Howards End, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and collections of writings by Dorothy Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

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