English Literature

About the book

William J. Long guides readers from Anglo-Saxon poetry to the end of the Victorian era, combining literary history with biographies, discussion of major works, and samples of writing. Each period is placed against a sketch of its political and social setting, while summaries, questions, bibliographies, and reading suggestions turn the narrative into a course of study. Long repeatedly urges students to read and enjoy literature for themselves rather than substitute critical terminology for experience. At the same time, his judgments reveal the preferences and national assumptions of an earlier educational tradition. The book can therefore serve both as an introduction to a familiar literary canon and as evidence of how that canon was once organized and taught.

• Literary history
• Reading and education
• Canon and judgment

Why read it

Trace a broad chronological account while observing the values built into an influential kind of literary education.

English school textbook by William J. Long