The two-volume Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Edition provides an attractive alternative to the full six-volume anthology. Though much more compact, the Concise Edition nevertheless provides substantial choice, offering both a strong selection of canonical authors and a sampling of lesser-known works. With an unparalleled selection of illustrations and of contextual materials, accessible and engaging introductions, and full explanatory annotations, these volumes provide concise yet extraordinarily wide-ranging coverage for British literature survey courses.

New to this volume are Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; new authors include Dorothy Wordsworth, John Clare, Tomson Highway, Derek Walcott, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The third edition now also offers substantially expanded representation of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh literatures, as well as contextual materials on Gothic literature, Modernism, and World War II. Material that no longer appears in the bound book may in most cases be found on the companion website; many larger works are also available in separate volumes that may at the instructor’s request be bundled together with the anthology at no extra cost to the student.

Features New to the Third Edition

• — New longer texts including Dickens’s performance reading of “David Copperfield,” Gaskell’s The Manchester Marriage, Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Beckett’s Endgame
• — New short selections from longer works including Eliot’s Middlemarch, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, and Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H.
• — New bound-book author entries for Dorothy Wordsworth, John Clare, Emily Brontë, Thomas de Quincey, Walter Pater, Isaac Rosenberg, Tomson Highway, Derek Walcott, Jeanette Winterson, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• — New selections representing “Literary Currents in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales in the Long Nineteenth Century”
• — New “Contexts” section on “Gothic Literature” including materials by Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen
• — “Literature, Politics, and Cultural Identity” section includes numerous new authors and pieces, including work by Sorely MacLean, Gillian Clarke, Kamau Brathwaite, Kim Moore, and Warsan Shire

Joseph L. Black is professor and director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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Don LePan, founder and CEO of academic publishing house Broadview Press, is the author of several non-fiction books and of two other works of fiction; his novel Animals (2010) has been described by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee as “a powerful piece of writing and a disturbing call to conscience.”

 

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Comments on The Broadview Anthology of British Literature:

“… an exciting achievement. It sets a new standard by which all other anthologies of British literature will now have to be measured.” — Graham Hammill, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

“I have been using The Broadview Anthology of British Literature for three years now. I love it—and so do my students!” — Martha Stoddard-Holmes, California State University, San Marcos

“… a very real intellectual, as well as pedagogical, achievement.” — Nicholas Watson, Harvard University

“After twenty years of teaching British literature from the Norton anthologies, I’m ready to switch to the Broadview. The introductions to each period are key to teaching a survey course, and those in the Broadview seem to me to be both more accessible to students and more detailed in their portraits of each era than are those of the Norton. And Broadview’s selection of authors and texts includes everything I like to teach from the Norton, plus a good deal else that’s of real interest.” — Neil R. Davison, Oregon State University

“Norton’s intros are good; Broadview’s are better, with greater clarity and comprehension, as well as emphasis upon how the language and literature develop, both reacting or responding to and influencing or modifying the cultural, religious/philosophical, political, and socio-economic developments of Britain. The historian and the linguist in me thoroughly enjoyed the flow and word-craftsmanship. If you have not considered the anthology for your courses, I recommend that you do so.” — Robert J. Schmidt, Tarrant County College

Comments on the new Concise Edition, Volume B

“Broadview has produced an anthology … that responds to the changing expectations of the contemporary classroom, offering a nice balance between print and online sources, and between the literary canon and diversity. … The coverage is excellent, all literary genres are amply represented, and the selections are judicious. Detailed author and period introductions provide information on everything from the pivotal events to key political figures to the clothes people wore. … Visual images nicely complement the [texts]. … This anthology should prove to be an invaluable resource for teachers and students alike.” — Jonathan Bolton, Auburn University