The Short Oxford History of English Literature - Softcover

Sanders, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199263388 ISBN 13: 9780199263387

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

The Short Oxford History of English Literature provides a comprehensive and authoritative introductory guide to the literature of the British Isles from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day, including a full treatment of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh writing in English. The chapters are arranged chronologically, covering all major periods of English literature from Old English to the post-war era, including the medieval period, the Renaissance, Shakespeare, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Romanticism, the Victorians, Modernism, and Postmodernism. In addition to a detailed discussion of all major figures and their works, Andrew Sanders examines throughout the relationship between the literary landscape and wider contemporary social, political, and intellectual developments.

This edition contains a range of new entries on important contemporary authors and an increased focus on female writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well as a fully updated and revised bibliography.

About this title

About the Author:

Andrew Sanders' research interests are centred on the Nineteenth-Century Novel and particularly on the work of Charles Dickens. He was the editor of the Dickensian from 1979-87 and is the author of Charles Dickens: Resurrectionist and The Spirit of New Age. He is the editor of the Oxford World's Classics editions of Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers, Thackeray's Barry Lyndon and Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays. His edition of Eliot's Romola was published by Penguin Classics.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0199263388
• ISBN 13: 9780199263387
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 766