Product Description

The third edition of this successful anthology is a thoroughly updated collection of historical literatures that span the period from the British Civil War to the French Revolution.

• Fully updated, this anthology retains the historical span and range of major and minor literatures that made the first two editions so successful
  
• Represents many texts in their entirety and in their earliest recoverable versions
  
• Includes longer selections from some writers too scantly represented in the previous edition including Equiano Mary Barber and Anne Wharton
  
• Additional works by major authors, including Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, and a portion of Lucy Hutchinson’s Order in Disorder.
  
• Writers such as Abiezer Cope, John Armstrong, and Ephraim Chambers, have been restored from the first edition
  
• Includes new drama selections
  
• Added timelines, an alternative listing of contents by theme, and updated head notes make this volume especially accessible to beginning students

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #364900 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1192 pages

Review
“ … contains a wide range of expected work (or samples of it, like three books from Paradise Lost, Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, Blake’s “The Tyger” and Burns’s “To a Mouse”) but also a representative selection of literature from women writers (the problematic of regarding literature by gender is itself of interest) and enough of a general context to give a coherent impression over a period often compartmentalized differently (say, into centuries).

The editor provides a helpful introduction with historical and cultural background. There is a select bibliography at the end, along with an index of titles and first lines. The editorial stance has been to modernize where necessary but not arbitrarily. Text and notes are well displayed on the page. A thematic index (gender, aesthetics, race/slavery, pastoral etc) is a useful feature. You get a lot for your money … The paperback is sturdily–bound and should survive regular consultation. Looking across the period from the Civil War to Romanticism opens up perspectives unknown to silo–thinking by period, and it is a rich and varied period with more than a few things to delight and surprise.”
Stuart Hannabuss, Gray′s School of Art, Aberdeen

From the Back Cover
The third edition of this successful anthology collects an exceptional range of historical literatures that span the period from the British Civil War to the French Revolution. This volume presents an extensive selection of canonical texts, many reprinted from their earliest recoverable versions. Challenging the boundaries of eighteenth–century literary studies, this volume also includes many non–canonical works and many works by women writers of the period. Additionally, selections of literature from private and public life, from letters to political ballads, help to illuminate the history and cultural contexts in which the major literary works were created.

This new edition includes a number of significant updates. In addition to reintroducing and extending selections from the previous editions and incorporating new drama selections, new works by other major authors have been added, including Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, a portion of Lucy Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder, part of a pamphlet by Reeve and Muggleton, and Rochester’s A Ramble in St. James’s Park. Additionally, a chronology, an alternative list of contents by theme, and updated headnotes lend added accessibility.

About the Author
Robert DeMaria, Jr., is the Henry Noble MacCracken Professor of English at Vassar College, where he has taught and often served as chair of his department since 1975. He has been a Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is the author of several books about Samuel Johnson and the editor (with the late Gwin Kolb) of Johnson on the English Language, volume 18 in the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Most recently he has edited (with Robert D. Brown) Classical Literature and its Reception (Blackwell, 2007).

Customer Reviews

Informative
I only purchased this book initially because it was a core text for my degree course in English Literature, but it has proved useful for gleaning other important facts outside my course. It may seem a little expensive but its not when you realize the sheer size and volume of information contained within.