The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 2b: The Victorian Age

I got this book for an English Romanticism class, and apart from assigned readings by the teacher, the book also has biographies of the poets and writers -- really interesting read!

I'm using the Longman Anthology of the Romantics and their Contemporaries (3d edition) for the first time in my 3d-year Romantics course (enrolment 88 and counting!) -- I would like to thank the editors for doing a fantastic job -- the introductory essay (pp. 3-29) is truly unparallelled for clarity, scope, and intelligence -- absolutely filled to the brim with great, challenging ideas. The headnotes provide a meaningful, detailed historical background. Excellent, well annotated selections -- the notes are great too -- not condescending, not entirely ruled by the editors' obsessions, finely articulated. What a sane, sensible, well balanced, erudite anthology! Congratulations and thank you !

This is a gorgeous anthology, with dazzling color plates (Martin, Gainsborough, Wright, Turnery, Blake, etc.) that are wonderful to look at and even better to teach with. The selections are all you could want for a survey of the romantics, and the organization of the materials--especially the cultural/contextual sections--is extremely helpful both for students of romantic literature and for the teacher designing a course. The notes are consistently illuminating without being obtrusive. This is an edition to trust. I'll never go Norton again!

For the purpose of teaching British Lit to undergraduates, this is the best anthology. In addition to the wonderful array of texts, there are full-color plates and black and white drawings and significant discussions of cultural movements and conditions. This anthology has helped to bring non-canonical texts to the fore, especially with respect to abolition and slavery. Prior to the publication of the first edition of this anthology, British abolitionist texts were not widely included in anthologies.I love this anthology and am firmly committed to it. This is a book students will hold on to and it's a great book from which to teach.

This is an excellent anthology, with generous selections, lively introductions, and beautifully reproduced color plates. Though published on "bible paper," there is very little bleed-through. It is an splendid alternative to the Norton Anthology, not only for its ample contexts sections and for its loving attention to both canonical and new writers (especially women writers of the Renaissance), but also for its favoring of complete works--More's Utopia, Sidney's Apology, etc. I've been using IB this semester, and though there are, as the (I think excessively) negative reviewer notes below, occasional errors, these are not unusual in massive endeavors. An old game in the 1950s used to be to send grad students in search of errors and typos in the standard literary critical books of the day. I'm sure these will be cleaned up. For now the book works especially well for "survey" courses and for upper-level, specialized courses, when supplemented by another paperback or two, or course packets.