Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Victorian Era

In all six of its volumes The Broadview Anthology of British Literature presents British literature in a truly distinctive light. Fully grounded in sound literary and historical scholarship, the anthology takes a fresh approach to many canonical authors, and includes a wide selection of work by lesser-known writers. The anthology also provides wide-ranging coverage of the worldwide connections of British literature, and it pays attention throughout to issues of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. It includes comprehensive introductions to each period, providing in each case an overview of the historical and cultural as well as the literary background. It features accessible and engaging headnotes for all authors, extensive explanatory annotations throughout, and an unparalleled number of illustrations and contextual materials, offering additional perspectives both on individual texts and on larger social and cultural developments. Innovative, authoritative, and comprehensive, The Broadview Anthology of British Literature embodies a consistently fresh approach to the study of literature and literary history. For the second edition of this volume a number of changes have been made. Elizabeth Gaskell's "Our Society at Cranford" has been added, as has Anthony Trollope's "A Turkish Bath." Charles Dickens is now represented with a number of short selections. The selection of poems by D.G. Rossetti has been expanded considerably (the entire 1870 House of Life sequence is included), as has that by Michael Field. A selection of poems by two key figures who also appear in the anthology's twentieth century volume (Thomas Hardy and W.B. Yeats) is also now included. Several of the Contexts sections in the volume have been expanded—notably "The Place of Women in Society," which now includes material concerning the Contagious Diseases Acts) and "Britain, Empire, and a Wider World," which now includes a section on the Great Exhibition of 1851. The volume will also include additional visual material—including four more pages of full color illustrations.