The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing

I find that intros are usually critical without being inclusive, this one was!

This college textbook is in fine condition for my daughter. She has no complaints on this volume. Thanks!

This is a great beginers guide to literature. The book covers the basics of many different forms of lit., and provdieds great examples for each form. The profile of several poets and writers are informative. A great book!

This is a decent book for the average English class. It contains several short stories, poems, and drama. It contains very good information and analysis on all. Good book.

Quite simply, The Bedford Introduction to Literature is the best introductory lit anthology available. Unlike many of the books out there, this title actually makes an effort to include contemporary authors and not just the same old stuff. Moreover, there are some surprises thrown in like Kanye West lyrics in the poetry coverage or an episode of Seinfeld in the collection of plays. The author includes these x-ray type close readings...it shows what to highlight, has notes on why particular things are important, etc. Plus, there is plenty of support for writing, research, critical theory, and more. Basically, it has everything you could want for in a book like this. My favorite section is the case study of Julia Alvarez which includes interviews, insights from Alvarez on her work, personal photos and her HANDWRITTEN DRAFTS...fascinating stuff. I've looked at a lot of other anthologies (Roberts, DiYanni, Perrine) at teacher conferences and this one really offers instruction and selections no other book has.

Okay, Michael Meyer has edited a brilliant textbook to be used for English majors and should be used in classrooms in American high schools. Here are a list of the authors and writers that are included in this book: Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Jean Anouilh, Matthew Arnold, John Ashbery, Margaret Atwood, W.H. Auden, Toni Cade Bambara, Samuel Beckett, Aprha Behn, John Berryman, William Blake, Elizabeth Bishop, Harold Bloom, Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bowen, Anne Bradstreet, Peter Brook, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning, Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, Raymond Carver, Tracy Chapman, John Cheever, Anton Chekhov, Kate Chopin, Sandra Cisneros, Lucille Clifton, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Colette, Stephen Crane, Countee Cullen, E.E. Cummings, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, E.L. Doctorow, John Donne, Rita Dove, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sigmund Freud, Robert Frost, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Allen Ginsberg, Susan Glaspell, Lorraine Hansberry, Thomas Hardy, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Hayden, H.D., Seamus Heany, Ernest Hemingway, Gerard Manley Hopkins, A.E. Housman, Langston Hughes, Henrik Ibsen, Gish Jen, Ben Jonson, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, John Keats, Jamaica Kincaid, D.H. Lawrence, Ursula Le Guin, Denise Levertov, Audre Lorde, Amy Lowell, Robert Lowell, Claude McKay, David Mamet, Katherine Mansfield, Christopher Marlowe, Herman Melville, Edna St. Vincent MIllay, Arthur Miller, John Milton, Moliere, marianne moore, bharati mukherjee, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Harold Pinter, Sylvia Plath, Alexander Pope, Ezra Pound, Walter Raleigh, Rainer Maria Rilke, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Christina Rossetti, Muriel Rukeyser, Sappho, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Percy Shelley, Leslie Marmon Silko, Wole Soyinka, Wallace Stevens, Wislawa Szymborska, Alfred Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Susan Glaspell, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Alice Walker, Wendy Wasserstein, Fay Weldon, Walt Whitman, Tennesse Williams, William Carlos Williams, William Wordsworth, James Wright, William Butler Yeats, and many more. What I like here is the lack of visuals and notes that you don't need. You just need the work. As an English teacher, I would like to more variety of choices to choose from. The Bedford is an invaluable resource of excellent choices.