In all six of its volumes The Broadview Anthology of British Literature presents British literature in a truly distinctive light. Fully grounded in sound literary and historical scholarship, the anthology takes a fresh approach to many canonical authors, and includes a wide selection of work by lesser-known writers. The anthology also provides wide-ranging coverage of the worldwide connections of British literature, and it pays attention throughout to issues of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. It includes comprehensive introductions to each period, providing in each case an overview of the historical and cultural as well as the literary background. It features accessible and engaging headnotes for all authors, extensive explanatory annotations throughout, and an unparalleled number of illustrations and contextual materials, offering additional perspectives both on individual texts and on larger social and cultural developments. Innovative, authoritative, and comprehensive, The Broadview Anthology of British Literature embodies a consistently fresh approach to the study of literature and literary history.

 

The second edition of volume 4: The Age of Romanticism includes James Hogg, Matthew Gregory Lewis, and John Polidori as well as new selections by Mary Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Maria Edgeworth, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Percy Shelley. The new edition also includes two new sections of contextual materials. New to the bound book is "The Natural, The Human, THe Supernatural, and the Sublime"--a section that includes not only a good selection of material from writers such as Edmund Burke and artists such as J.M.W. Turner but also material that may be less well known on topics such as changing human attitudes towards non-animals. New to the website is a wide-ranging selection of contextual materials on the Industrial Revolution, entitled "Steam Power and the Machine Age. Additional highlights of this volume include: Jane Austen's Lady Susan, a lesser-known but wonderfully readable epistolary short novel; "A Hymn to Na'ra'yena" by Sir William Jones; and, in an exception to the anthology's general policy of including works in their entirety, Mary Shelley is represented by the last two chapters of The Last Man and by a selection of letters.

 

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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"... an exciting achievement ... It sets a new standard by which all other anthologies of British literature will now have to be measured."

Graham Hammill

"With the publication of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, teachers and students in survey and upper-level undergraduate courses have a compelling alternative to the established anthologies from Norton and Longman. Having adopted the first two volumes for an early period survey course last year, I had no hesitation in repeating the experience this year. The medieval volume, in particular, is superb, with its generous representation of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman literary culture, as well as its growing collection of texts from the too little-known fifteenth century. This is a very real intellectual, as well as pedagogical, achievement."

Nicholas Watson

"...I am very impressed. ... A wealth of cultural and historical information is provided. ... The introductions show subtle expertise.... Here, as in the other volumes, the editors bring English literary tradition to life."

Wendy Nielsen