The Fourth Edition of The Longman Anthology of British Literature continues its tradition of presenting works in the historical context in which they were written. This fresh approach includes writers from the British Isles, underrepresented female authors, "Perspectives" sectionsthatshed light on the period as a whole and link with immediately surrounding works to help illuminate a theme, "And Its Time" clusters that illuminate a specific cultural moment or a debate to which an author is responding, and "Responses" in which later authors respond to one or more texts from earlier works. New works include William Baldwin's Beware the Cat (the 1st English novel), Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Books 6 and the Two Cantos of Mutability and William Shakespeare's Othello and King Lear.

Key Benefit:

The Fourth Edition builds upon the strengths of previous editions with its sustained attention to the context in which the literature was produced and its broadened scope of literature that includes the full cultural diversity of the British Isles.

Key Topics:

Includes canonical authors and newly visible authors. Extensive selections from previously underrepresented female writers are fully integrated. New "Responses" readings group works that were based on earlier writings to link works across time and place. "Perspectives" readings are broad groupings that illuminate underlying issues in a variety of the major works of a period. Market: For anyone wanting a fresh approach to the study and enjoyment of British literature.

David Damrosch is Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He is a past president of the American Comparative Literature Association, and has written widely on world literature from antiquity to the present. His books include What Is World Literature? (2003), The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh (2007), and How to Read World Literature (2009). He is the founding general editor of the six-volume Longman Anthology of World Literature, 2/e (2009) and the editor of Teaching World Literature (2009).

Kevin J. H. Dettmar is W. M. Keck Professor and Chair, Department of English, at Pomona College, and Past President of the Modernist Studies Association.  He is the author of The Illicit Joyce of Postmodernism and Is Rock Dead?, and the editor of Rereading the New: A Backward Glance at Modernism; Marketing Modernisms: Self-Promotion, Canonization, and Rereading; Reading Rock & Roll: Authenticity, Appropriation, Aesthetics; the Barnes & Noble Classics edition of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners; and The Blackwell Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture, and co-general editor of The Longman Anthology of British Literature.                   

Clare Carroll is Director of Renaissance Studies at The Graduate Center, City University of New York and Professor of Comparative Literature at Queens College and at The Graduate Center, CUNY.  Her research is in Renaissance Studies, with particular interests in early modern colonialism, epic poetry, historiography, and translation. She is the author of The Orlando Furioso: A Stoic Comedy, and editor of Richard Beacon's humanist dialogue on the colonization of Ireland, Solon His Follie. Her most recent book is Circe's Cup: Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Ireland. She has received Fulbright Fellowships for her research and the Queens College President's Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English at The University of Sussex. He is the author of a number of books, including Shakespeare and Republicanism (2005), which was awarded the 2006 Sixteenth-Century Society Conference Roland H. Bainton Prize for Literature; Literature, Travel and Colonialism in the English Renaissance, 1540-1625 (1998); and Spenser's Irish Experience: Wilde Fruyt and Salvage Soyl (1997). He has also edited a number, most recently, with Matthew Dimmock, Religions of the Book: Co-existence and Conflict, 1400-1660 (2008), and with Raymond Gillespie, The Oxford History of the Irish Book, Vol. III: The Irish Book in English, 1550-1800 (2006). He is a regular reviewer for the TLS.

Constance Jordan is Professor Emerita of English at Claremont Graduate University. She is the author of Renaissance Feminism:  Literary Texts and Political Models, and Shakespeare's Monarchies:  Ruler and Subject in the Romances, and co-editor with Karen Cunningham of a forthcoming collection of essays on the Law in Shakespeare. She has received Fellowships from the ACLS, the NEH, and the Folger and the Huntington Libraries.  Her interests include the literature of contact in the Atlantic World, 1500-1680.