AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Longman Compact Anthology of British Literature - Compact Edition by David Damrosch, Christopher Baswell, Clare Carroll, Kevin Dettmar, Heather Henderson, Constance Jordan, Peter Manning, Anne Howland Schotter, William Chapman Sharpe, Stuart Sherman ISBN: 0-321-07670-2 Publisher: Pearson Longman Pub. Date: 20 December, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $71.00

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (3 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent variety of selections
Comment: I appreciate the breadth and balance of the selection of materials in the Longman Anthology, particularly in comparison with the Norton Anthology. While the Norton Anthology has more prestige, it has some curious choices of material (granted I own the 7th edition some improvements may have been made in newer issues).

Where the Longman anthology (in a one-volume anthology no less) has a verse translation of Beowulf, Norton has a turgid prose translation. Norton completely ignores Arthurian literature (apart from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and a tad of Malory). Norton devotes 250 pages to Edmund Spenser (as opposed to 120 to Chaucer and 150 to Shakespeare). In virtually every time period, the Longman anthology shows better editorial decision-making. David Damrosch also does an excellent job selecting works that are crucial to the development of English Literature along with the works that represent the pinnacle of accomplishment. For instance, it is easier to trace the impact of personal journals, travel literature, literary periodicals and essays on the development of the novel using the Longman Anthology because of their superior organization of this material.

Finally, the inclusion of many examples of contemporary criticism, social documents and grouping of material into natural thematic topics allows a teacher to demonstrate the impact of society on, and the social consequences of, literature in an organic way. This method gives teachers the ability to easily teach literature in concert with history, philosophy and the other humanities.

Considering that this anthology is only now in its first few editions, it represents a very strong entry in the marketplace. I have been very pleased using it. The typesetting and sturdy paper are also an improvement on many other available anthologies.

Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent anthology for many levels
Comment: The book pictured here is the first edition. Longman is now in its second edition. Both are excellent for their copious selection of canonical authors and inclusion of women writers and
sociopolitical contexts. The new edition also contains superb color plates and a few corrections;I have written elsewhere about it.

Rating: 1
Summary: Loaded with errors and unreliable
Comment: The biography of Sir Thomas Wyatt states that "Anne implicated by association those who were supposed to have been her lovers." It was her musician, Mark Smeaton, who was arrested before she was and tortured, who was made to confess possible names, since the charges were trumped up anyway by Thomas Cromwell; Anne implicated no one. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, is listed as having died in 1545; his actual execution date was January 19, 1547, since he wasn't even arrested and charged until 1546, a year after his supposed death, according to Longman. The anthology is generous in its introductory essay where it states that Henry VIII's reasons for breaking with Rome were "many and complex," since the primary motivating factor for his doing so was to be rid of Catherine of Aragon so he could wed Anne Boleyn.

I'm only 60 pages into the anthology but the errors are unsurprising, given the number of similar errors in Volume 1A. A disappointment: buy the Norton anthology edited by the respected M. H. Abrams instead.