Product Description The Short Oxford History of English Literature, 2e provides a comprehensive beginner's guide to the literature of the British Isles from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day in one volume. Separate chapters trace the development from Beowulf to the post-modern fictions of Seamus Heaneyand Angela Carter and include a new section on late 20th century prose and British and Irish poetry of the 60s. The History provides detailed discussion of Old and Middle English literature, the Renaissance, Shakespeare, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Romantics, Victorian andEdwardian literature, Modernism, and post-war writing. Discussions of key writers and works are combined with analysis of the impact on literature of contemporary political, social, and intellectual developments. The book includes Scottish, Irish, and Welsh writers, and it asks about the future ofthe canon in the light of the fragmented condition of British writing in the post-imperial period. Review An excellent introduction and reference tool for sixth- formers and undergraduates. The Times Higher Education Supplement About the Author Andrews Sanders is the editor of the Oxford World Classic's editions of Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers (1982); Thackeray's Barry Lyndon (1984) and The Newcomes (1995); Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities (1988) and David Copperfield (1999); and Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1989). He also contributed theVictorians Chapter in the Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature. Dickens and the Spirit of the Age is to be published in Nov. 1999 (Oxford University Press).