Overview

Read by millions of students over seven editions, The Norton Anthology of English Literature remains the most trusted undergraduate survey of English literature available and one of the most successful college texts ever published.

Firmly grounded by the hallmark strengths of all Norton Anthologies — thorough and helpful introductory matter, judicious annotation, complete texts wherever possible —The Norton Anthology of English Literature, The Major Authors has been revitalized in this Eighth Edition through the collaboration between six new editors and six seasoned ones. Under the direction of Stephen Greenblatt, General Editor, the editors have reconsidered all aspects of the anthology to make it an even better teaching tool.

Top ?Applicable Courses

English, English Literature

Top ?Features

• Trusted Editorial Apparatus

  Norton Anthologies set the standard for editorial help that is right for undergraduate readers. The Major Authors Edition demonstrates why this is so. Through the collaboration of new and seasoned editors, all apparatus have been freshly considered — period introductions and headnotes judiciously recast, thousands of annotations and glosses fine-tuned, timelines and bibliographies carefully updated, and appendixes and maps reconceived and rewritten — all with the goal of making these aids to reading and understanding as helpful as possible.

• Writers in Depth/Complete Works

  The Eighth Edition carries on the editors' commitment to represent major figures in sufficient depth for students to gain a full appreciation of the writers and their work. Newly included are complete texts of the York Crucifixion play, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Haywood's Fantomina, Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King, and Friel's Translations. These important additions join Heaney's award-winning translation of Beowulf, Behn's Oroonoko, Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and many others.

• Color Plates

  Forty-eight pages of beautiful color plates featuring more than seventy works of art provide students with visual counterpoints to the literary works and further expand students' appreciation of the cultural milieu surrounding the literature. Captions draw attention to important details and cross-references related to literary works in the anthology. In addition to the color plates, black-and-white engravings and illustrations by Hogarth, Blake, and Rossetti provide examples of the hybrid art of the "visual narrative."

• Global Literature in English

  Building on the boundary-breaking Seventh Edition, the Eighth Edition reflects the editors' continued commitment to give full voice to global literature in English. Joining such writers as Heaney, Gordimer, Coetzee, and Rushdie are four new globally diverse writers: Irish playwright Brian Friel, West Indies-born novelist Jean Rhys, and celebrated Canadian authors Alice Munro and Anne Carson.

• Reading Chaucer

  Designed as a way into the original language of Chaucer's writings, this pamphlet offers students a modern English translation of all Chaucer selections in the Anthology. The translation, by Larry D. Benson (Professor, Harvard University, emeritus), is interlineated with the Middle English text; a brief introduction to reading Chaucer in the original, by Alfred David and James Simpson, is also included. The pamphlet may be packaged without charge with The Norton Anthology of English Literature upon instructor's request.

Top ?Content Summary

 Table of Contents

Top ?About the Author

Stephen Greenblatt (Ph.D. Yale) is Cogan University Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University.

M. H. Abrams (Founding Editor Emeritus; Ph.D. Harvard) is Professor of English, Emeritus at Cornell University.

Carol T. Christ (Ph.D. Yale) is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and President of Smith College.

Alfred David (Ph.D. Harvard) is Professor of English Emeritus at Indiana University.

Barbara K. Lewalski (Ph.D. Chicago) is William R. Kenan Professor of English and of History and Literature at Harvard University.

Lawrence Lipking (Ph.D. Cornell) is Professor of English and Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University.

George M. Logan (Ph.D. Harvard) is James Cappon Professor of English at Queen's University, Canada, where he is former head of the English Department and winner of the W. J. Barnes Teaching Excellence Award.

Katharine Eisaman Maus (Ph.D. Johns Hopkins) is James Branch Cabell Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

James Noggle (Ph.D. Berkeley) is Associate Professor of English and Whitehead Associate Professor of Critical Thought at Wellesley College.

Jahan Ramazani (Ph.D. Yale and M.Phil. Oxford) is Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia, previously the Mayo NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor.

Catherine Robson (Ph.D. Berkeley) is Associate Professor of English and Chancellor's Fellow at the University of California, Davis, and a faculty member of the University of California Dickens Project.

James Simpson (Ph.D. Cambridge) is Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard University and former Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge.

Jon Stallworthy (M.A. and B.Litt. Oxford) is Senior Research Fellow at Wolfson College of Oxford University, where he is also Professor of English Literature.

Jack Stillinger (Ph.D. Harvard) is Center for Advanced Study Professor of English at the University of Illinois.

Top ?Teacher's Resources

• Course Guide
• Instructor Image Disk

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