The Norton Introduction to Fiction

New Stories. Balanced attention to text and context. Substantive help with reading and writing.

The 54 stories in the Sixth Edition, 19 of which are new, provide a wealth of classroom favorites and contemporary selections, among them stories by Toni Cade Bambara, Charles Baxter, Joseph Conrad, Julio Cortázar, Ha Jin, Margaret Laurence, Reginald McKnight, Eudora Welty, and Edith Wharton.

The Sixth Edition Strengthens its emphasis on reading texts in different contexts―authorial, literary, cultural, and social―with two new "Exploring Contexts" chapters devoted to culture and literary forms: "border" stories by Rudolfo Anaya, Richard Dokey, and Denise Chávez; and the "short short" story and the novel.

Fiction: Reading, Responding, Writing introduces students to reading fiction. Evaluating Fiction develops students'critical skills. Questions and Writing Suggestions promote careful reading and offer sparks for writing. 3 complete student papers provide real student responses to several of the Writing suggestions. Writing about Fiction includes a jargon-free introduction to contemporary critical theory.

Jerome Beaty (Ph.D., Illinois) is Professor of English at Emory University.  He is the author of Middlemarch: From Notebook to Novel and Misreading Jane Eyre and coeditor, with J. Paul Hunter, of The Norton Introduction to Literature.