The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume Two

This anthology is very useful and extensive, providing a great span of works in British Literature

No artist creates in a vacuum. Oftentimes, the most wonderful way to appreciate a great work of literature is to realize its historical context. By doing so, the reader can understand both the important issues prevalent during the author's lifetime and the significant events and works experienced and written prior to the life of the author that were profoundly influential. For example, it is almost impossible to truly imagine the world of Dickens or Carlyle without an understanding of the revolting conditions of London after the Industrial Revolution or to fully comprehend the realm of Yeats and Joyce without an acknowledgement of the rebellions in Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the same time, these authors' debts to writers like Shakespeare, Milton, or Blake must also be recognized. This anthology provides just such an historical perspective, a valuable insight into the worlds of these fantastic wordsmiths. Starting where the first volume first left off, volume two begins with romantics such as Blake, Wordsworth, and Keats, moves through the Victorian age of Tennyson, Dickens, and Carlyle, and ends with the modern and postmodern authors from Eliot and Yeats to Larkin and Walcott. There are three main essays for each of the time periods, telling biographies before each author, and collections of primary documents and records that recount specific issues and events of the times. These packets of information make each author's collection of literature that much more understandable, each collection being many of the best poems and even complete works such as Shelley's "Frankenstein," Dickens' "Christmas Carol," Wilde's "Importance of Being Earnest," and Eliot's "Waste Land." This compendium stands not only as a superb presentation of the most important British literature from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present but as a welcome means of understanding the literature even better through the historical perspective provided.