BRITISH WRITERS Classics, Volume 1

BRITISH WRITERS Classics, Volume 1
By Jay Parini
Number Of Pages: 408
Publication Date: 1979-12-01
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0684312530
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780684312538

Scribner launches a new literature reference source with this volume, accompaniment to its well-established British Writers series. While that series focus on writers, the new one concentrates on works. The first volume contains extensive essays on 20 literary classics in various genres, selected after researching the curriculum and consulting with professors. Although many of the choices, such as Great Expectations, are unsurprising, others, such as Middlemarch and Tristram Shandy, are not typically given to beginning students of literature, reflecting the fact that the new series is intended for a somewhat advanced audience. 

An essay of around 20 pages in length is devoted to each classic and enhanced by a chronology of events in the author's life and a select bibliography of primary and secondary materials. Although most of the essays include background and a discussion of importance and influence as well as analysis, they do not adhere to a uniform structure. Some address biographical, literary, or cultural context in considerable detail, while others focus mainly on the text. The volume concludes with an index (presumably this will be cumulative as the series grow) and a helpful listing of all authors covered in the British Writers series.

Subjects of Volume 1:

THE ALCHEMIST by Ben Jonson
ARCADIA by Tom Stoppard
THE CANTERBURY TALES by Geoffrey Chaucer
EMMA by Jane Austen
GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS by Jonathan Swift
HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
HOLY SONNETS by John Donne
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Oscar Wilde
KIM by Rudyard Kipling
MAN AND SUPERMAN by George Bernard Shaw
MIDDLEMARCH by George Eliot
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
THE PRELUDE by William Wordsworth
THE RAPE OF THE LOCK by Alexander Pope
THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE by Thomas Hardy
THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR HYDE by Robert Louis Stevenson
TRISTRAM SHANDY by Laurence Sterne
UTOPIA by Thomas More
WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Brontë