Second Edition.

The Short Oxford History of English Literature provides a comprehensive beginner's guide to the literature of the British Isles from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day in one volume. Separate chapters trace the development from Beowulf to the post-modern fictions of Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter and include a new section on late 20th century prose and British and Irish poetry of the 60s. The History provides detailed discussion of Old and Middle English literature, the Renaissance, Shakespeare, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Romantics, Victorian and Edwardian literature, Modernism, and post-war writing. Discussions of key writers and works are combined with analysis of the impact on literature of contemporary political, social, and intellectual developments. The book includes Scottish, Irish, and Welsh writers, and it asks about the future of the canon in the light of the fragmented condition of British writing in the post-imperial period.