A History of British, Irish and American Literature

Published in 2003 and containing discussions of literary works up to 2002, this is a unique venture in the area of literary history. The book attempts to render more accessible the vast jungle of literary works normally discussed under the headings "British", "Irish" and "American". Discussing outstanding writings in prose, poetry, drama and nonfiction, this literary history covers the time from the Anglo-Saxon period to the postmodernism of the 21st century while giving the reader a sense of what is still worth reading. Special attention has been given to literary works published after 1900 and featuring on today’s academic syllabus.

The major innovative feature, however, is the inte­gration of visual material in this book. In addition to the 160 pictures com­ple­menting the text, the CD-ROM attached to each copy contains, besides the en­tire text stored elec­troni­cally, 460 illustra­tions, in­clud­ing the pic­­tures prin­ted in the book (here many in colour). This feature gives the reader an excel­lent idea of the sym­biosis be­tween visual and verbal rep­resen­tations and the un­­deniable debt of liter­ature to art in all the per­iods dis­cussed in this book.

Presenting brief discu­s­sions of both the great works of highbrow liter­ature and rep­re­sent­ative writ­ings of the popular can­­on, this literary history thus provides surveys of what students are told to read by academic critics and of what the post-capitalist market offers by way of enter­tainment in an alternative canon.

Innovative features include the following:

- in addition to the major genres, discussions of non-fictional works (literary crit­i­cism, theory, travel writing, historio­gra­phy, social sciences) and contemporary popular genres (crime fiction, science fiction, fantasy, children's literature, the Western, horror fic­tion);

- an appendix with a detailed bibliography containing suggestions for further reading, a glossary of literary terms, chron­ological tables for British/Anglo-Irish and American literatures, and an index;

- a CD-ROM with the entire text and 460 illustrations.