Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by artemismatchalatte
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1: The Middle Ages through the Restoration & the Eighteenth Century by M.H. Abrams
Did not finish book.
4.0
This is absolutely necessary if you're planning on majoring in English or English Literature Studies. This book covers the earliest known writing in English from the early middle ages to the Restoration in the eighteenth century. The material is organized by era and author, going in chronological order for the most part. The background pieces are extremely helpful and there are glosses and notes to help readers understand the content (especially the more difficult texts from earlier and more obscure authors). I found the biographical and political information extremely helpful as well for helping to place where everything was on a timeline.
There are features for fan favorites like Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton but there are also many, many other authors featured in here who have contributed to literature during these early periods (Bede, Marie de France, Sir Thomas More, Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood to name a few). There are even some political writings such as the letters of the Tudor Queens Mary and Elizabeth I.
This is an academic text and very much reads like a history book (a big complaint from the other kids in my class). I read this for my Early British Literature class. There is a second volume which covers British literature from the 19th century until the current era (I'm pretty sure, but I haven't read that).
My rating is 4.5 stars, you'll definitely learn a lot about Early Brit Lit from this text, it's just a lot of reading and some of the texts are much more difficult to deal with than others, as with most collections, you feel varying emotions from piece to piece.
**Also, if you're getting this edition for a class, I highly suggest buying the split volume edition, which has three smaller books instead of the one bigger book, like I did so you don't have to lug the big book around at once (It has 2,000 plus pages and is the size of a dictionary). I'm thankful I did. The content is exactly the same between the one big and the split 3 volumes, so you should have no issues there.**
There are features for fan favorites like Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton but there are also many, many other authors featured in here who have contributed to literature during these early periods (Bede, Marie de France, Sir Thomas More, Sir Walter Raleigh, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Aphra Behn and Eliza Haywood to name a few). There are even some political writings such as the letters of the Tudor Queens Mary and Elizabeth I.
This is an academic text and very much reads like a history book (a big complaint from the other kids in my class). I read this for my Early British Literature class. There is a second volume which covers British literature from the 19th century until the current era (I'm pretty sure, but I haven't read that).
My rating is 4.5 stars, you'll definitely learn a lot about Early Brit Lit from this text, it's just a lot of reading and some of the texts are much more difficult to deal with than others, as with most collections, you feel varying emotions from piece to piece.
**Also, if you're getting this edition for a class, I highly suggest buying the split volume edition, which has three smaller books instead of the one bigger book, like I did so you don't have to lug the big book around at once (It has 2,000 plus pages and is the size of a dictionary). I'm thankful I did. The content is exactly the same between the one big and the split 3 volumes, so you should have no issues there.**