Product Description

The Short Oxford History of English Literature is the most comprehensive and scholarly history of English literature on the market. It offers an introductory guide to the literature of the British Isles from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day in eleven chapters covering all the major periods of English literature chronologically. Professor Sanders provides detailed analysis of the major writers and their works and examines the impact of British literature on contemporary political, social and intellectual developments. This third edition has been revised and updated for a 21st century reader, incorporating discussion of a greater number of female and contemporary authors.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #166770 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 766 pages

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.

Customer Reviews

Every student's best friend!
Andrew Sanders is Professor of English Literature at Durham University, so you'd hope he might know what he's talking about. Fortunately, he does. This book is a triumph of top-flight scholarship married to the kind of compulsive readability that most novelists can only dream sweatily about.

The big risk with "Shorter..." books like this is either that they're not "Shorter" at all, or that they take their abbreviated nature a bit too seriously and end up reading like a beach romance. Sanders has avoided these pitfalls by producing a book that's satisfyingly weighty and detailed, but which never veers off into full-on literati pretension. His treatment of Chaucer, for instance, is a dream - real appreciation and explanation of the poet's impact on English literature, mitigated by a lightness of touch and refreshing appreciation for the naughty bits that still cause teenagers up and down the land to snigger behind their hands. Great stuff.

Aside from the purely historical, Sanders has the originality to kick things off with an interesting debate on what constitutes the "Canon" of English Literature. This, as any Lit student or teacher of 16 year olds knows, is a thorny issue: "WHY do we have to learn Shakespeare?", "WHO SAYS this is so great?" etc etc. No assumptions are made, no diktats laid down. This same approach is used throughout: Sanders is lucid and enthusiastic about everything from Coleridge to Larkin without ever quite allowing himself the luxury of partiality.

Which is, of course, the exact and proper function of a book like this. It's digestible and fun, but also - and make no mistake about it - learned and scholarly. Anyone with even a passing interest in English Literature should read it immediately.

It's also a godsend for work-shy undergraduates. Take it from me - I would never have possed my degree without it!