The Short Oxford History of English Literature - Hardcover

Sanders, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198711573 ISBN 13: 9780198711575

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1996

Synopsis

The Short Oxford History of English Literature provides in a single volume a comprehensive beginner's guide to the literature of the British Isles from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day. Separate chapters trace the development of English literature from Beowulf to the "post-modern" fictions of Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter. The History provides detailed discussion of Old and Middle English Literature, the Renaissance, Shakespeare, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Romantics, Victorian and Edwardian literature, Modernism, and post-war writing. Discussions of key writers and works from Anselm and Chaucer to Spencer and Bunyan, and from Swift and Johnson to Dickens and D.H. Lawrence, are combined with analysis of the impact on literature of contemporary political, social, and intellectual developments. The History looks again at the canon of English literature and provides a fresh assessment of the distinctive contribution of Scottish, Irish, and Welsh writers, and it asks about the future of the canon in the light of the fragmented condition of British writing in the post-imperial period. This revised edition includes for the first time detailed, chapter-by-chapter guidance on further reading.

About this title

About the Author

Dr Sanders is editor of the World's Classics Editions of Gaskells' Sylvia's Lovers (1982); Thackeray's Barry Lyndon (1984); Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1988); and Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1989). He contributed the Victorians chapter in the Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature. He is the author of A Companion A Tale of Two Cities (Unwin Hyman, 1988); Charles Dickens: Resurrectionist (Macmillan, 1982), and The Victorian Historical Novel 1840-1880 (Macmillan, 1978).

From Library Journal

Designed to replace Emile Legouis's A Short History of English Literature (Oxford Univ. Pr., 1934), Sanders's work competes with one-volume histories by Pat Rogers (The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature, Oxford Univ. Pr., 1987), Alastair Fowler (A History of English Literature, LJ 3/1/88), and Peter Quennell (A History of English Literature, LJ 1/1/74. o.p.). Sanders includes more information than Fowler but lacks the advantage of the photographs, art work, and maps found in Rogers and Quennell. He skillfully introduces controversies about the development of an English literature canon and explains how writers got selected for burial in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, arguing that English literature has always been rife with contradiction, "both multiple and polarized, both popular and elite." His book has ten major chapters covering Old English, medieval, Renaissance, Shakespearean, 17th- and 18th-century, Romantic, Victorian, Modern, and postwar literature. Innovative essays include "Women's Writing in the Restoration" and "The New Morality," which examines the 1970s and 1980s. Recommended for academic and most public libraries.
J. Thorndike, Lakeland Coll., Sheboygan, Wis.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0198711573
• ISBN 13: 9780198711575
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 728