Guided by the latest scholarship, The Broadview Anthology of British Literature is acclaimed for its breadth and its deep attention to literature’s historical and cultural contexts. The Broadview is structured to meet the needs of today’s students, with an unparalleled selection of illustrations and contextual materials, accessible and engaging introductions, and full explanatory annotations.
The full anthology comprises six bound volumes, together with a substantial website component, greatly expanding the range of texts that are available to teach. Many longer works are also available from the publisher in separate volumes that may at the instructor’s request be bundled together with this anthology.
For the convenience of those whose focus does not extend to the full period covered in Volume 6: The Twentieth Century and Beyond, the volume is now available either in its original one-volume format or in an alternative two-volume format, with Volume 6a (The Early Twentieth Century) extending to the end of WWII, and Volume 6b (The Late Twentieth Century and Beyond) covering the postwar period to the present century.
Learn more about The Broadview Anthology of British Literature on this page.
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Comments on The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Twentieth Century and Beyond:
“[The Twentieth Century and Beyond] is better [than the competition] on cultural and social contexts, in its introductions, in its number and quality of images and in the choices of texts beyond the classic ones. … Overall, the Broadview Anthology is an immensely attractive one—adventurous and very wide ranging.” — Enda Duffy, University of California, Santa Barbara
Comments on The Broadview Anthology of British Literature:
“ … sets a new standard by which all other anthologies of British literature will now have to be measured.” — Graham Hammill, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
“After twenty years of teaching British literature from the Norton anthologies, I’m ready to switch to the Broadview. The introductions to each period are key to teaching a survey course, and those in the Broadview seem to me to be both more accessible to students and more detailed in their portraits of each era than are those of the Norton. And Broadview’s selection of authors and texts includes everything I like to teach from the Norton, plus a good deal else that’s of real interest.” — Neil R. Davison, Oregon State University
“… I have been using The Broadview Anthology of British Literature for three years now. I love it—and so do my students!” — Martha Stoddard-Holmes, California State University, San Marcos
Readings highlighted in grey are included on the anthology’s companion website.
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND BEYOND: 1945 TO TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
- The End of the War and the Coming of the Welfare State
- The End of Empire
- From the 1960s to Century’s End
- Ireland, Scotland, Wales
- The New Millennium
- The History of the English Language
LEONORA CARRINGTON
DORIS LESSING
- To Room Nineteen
- from The Golden Notebook
- from “Introduction” to the 1971 edition
DYLAN THOMAS
- The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower
- Fern Hill
- Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
- A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London
- IN CONTEXT: Dylan Thomas in America (online)
- from John Malcolm Brinnin, Dylan Thomas in America: An Intimate Journal
JUDITH WRIGHT
- Woman to Man
- The Bull
- Woman to Child
- At Cooloola
- Sports Field
- Two Dreamtimes
- from A Human Pattern: Selected Poems
P.K. PAGE
- The Stenographers
- The Landlady
- Ecce Homo
- Stories of Snow
- Young Girls
- After Rain
- Nursing Home
- from “Address at Simon Fraser”
- Planet Earth
- Calgary
PENELOPE FITZGERALD
GRAHAM GREENE
- The Basement Room
- IN CONTEXT: Reflections on Writing and Filmmaking
- “Preface” to The Fallen Idol
- from “Interview with Marie-Françoise Allain”
PHILIP LARKIN
- Days
- Church Going
- Talking in Bed
- Dockery and Son
- Annus Mirabilis
- High Windows
- This Be the Verse
- Vers de Société
- The Old Fools
- Aubade
CONTEXTS: POWER, POLITICS, AND THE BOOK (online)
- The Case of Mrs Warren’s Profession
- from An Act for Regulating Theatres, 1943
- Bernard Shaw et al., “The Censorship of Plays”
- “Not Bloody Likely”: The Case of Pygmalion
- from Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, Act 3
- The Case of Ulysses
- from Hon. John M. Woolsey, United States District Court, Decision in United States of America v. One Book Called “Ulysses”
- from James Joyce, Ulysses, Episode 18: Penelope
- Publishing “Unnatural Politics”: Bernard Shaw’s Common Sense about the War
- from Bernard Shaw, Common Sense about the War
- The Case of J.B. Priestley’s Wartime Broadcasts: “He Gave Us … An Ideology”
- from “Less Bread and More Taxes”
- from “A Few Words to the Pot-and-Kettle Theorists”
- from “First Anniversary of the War”
- from “Going North”
- The Case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover
- from The Obscene Publications Act
- from D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover: Chapter 3
- from Mervyn Griffith-Jones, Address to the Jury, Regina v. Penguin Books Limited
- from Gerald Gardiner, Address to the Jury, Regina V. Penguin Books Limited
- from Dame Rebecca West, Testimony on Behalf of the Defense, Regina v. Penguin Books Limited
- from Sir Allen Lane, Testimony on Behalf of the Defense, Regina v. Penguin Books Limited
- The Case of The Satanic Verses
ALAN SILLITOE
- The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
- IN CONTEXT: “Angry Young Men”
- from John Osborne, A Better Class of Person: An Autobiography
- Passing Looks at Christmas
THOM GUNN
- The Wound
- Tamer and Hawk
- To His Cynical Mistress
- The Hug
- The Missing
HAROLD PINTER
TED HUGHES
- The Thought-Fox
- Pike
- Wodwo
- Theology
- A Childish Prank
- The Seven Sorrows
- Heptonstall Old Church
- You Hated Spain
- Daffodils
A.S. BYATT
CONTEXTS: PUBLIC VOICES: THE END OF EMPIRE AND A NEW BRITAIN
- The “Quit India” Movement
- from Mohandas K. Gandhi, “Speech to the All India Congress Committee”
- from Sir Stafford Cripps, “Statement on India”
- from Martin Luther King, “The Birth of a New Nation” (online)
- from Harold Macmillan, “Speech Made to the South African Parliament” (online)
- from Manmohan Singh, “Acceptance Speech on the Occasion of the Awarding of the Degree of Doctor of Civil Law, Honoris Causa” (online)
- from Winston Churchill, “Campaign Speech” (online)
- from Clement Attlee, “Speech on the King’s Address” (online)
- from Enoch Powell, “Speech on Race and Immigration” (online)
- from Margaret Thatcher, “Speech to the Conservative Party Conference” (online)
- from Tony Blair, “Speech to the Labour Party Conference” (online)
- from Tony Blair, “Speech on the War in Iraq and Global Terrorism” (online)
CHINUA ACHEBE
- The Sacrificial Egg
- from “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”
DEREK WALCOTT
- A Far Cry from Africa
- Ruins of a Great House
- A Letter from Brooklyn
- from Midsummer
SEAMUS HEANEY
- Digging
- Thatcher
- The Wife’s Tale
- The Grauballe Man
- Punishment
- Casualty
- Seeing Things
- Englands of the Mind
ALICE MUNRO
- Silence (online)
- The View from Castle Rock
NGŨGĨ WA THIONG’O
- from Decolonising the Mind
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
LES MURRAY
- An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow
- Bent Water in the Tasmanian Highlands
- The Quality of Sprawl
- Pigs
- The Mare Out on the Road
MARGARET ATWOOD
- Further Arrivals
- Death of a Young Son by Drowning
- The Immigrants
- Later in Belleville: Career
- Daguerreotype Taken in Old Age
- Thoughts from Underground
- A Bus along St. Clair: December
- [you fit into me]
- The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake in Context
- IN CONTEXT: Susanna Moodie (online)
- from Susanna Moodie, Roughing It in the Bush
- from Susanna Moodie, Life in the Clearings versus the Bush
MICHAEL ONDAATJE
- Letters & Other Worlds
- Travels in Ceylon (from Running in the Family)
TOM STOPPARD
CARYL CHURCHILL
ANGELA CARTER
JOHN CLEESE AND GRAHAM CHAPMAN
- from Monty Python’s Flying Circus
- Dead Parrot Sketch
- Pet Conversion
- Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook
- Spam
SALMAN RUSHDIE
IAN MCEWAN
PAUL MULDOON
- Good Friday, 1971. Driving Westward
- Our Lady of Ardboe
- The Sightseers
- Cherish the Ladies
- Milkweed and Monarch
- The Plot
- Anonymous: Myself and Pangur
KAZUO ISHIGURO
HANIF KUREISHI
DAVID DABYDEEN
- Slave Song
- Coolie Odyssey
- from Turner: New and Selected Poems
CAROL ANN DUFFY
- Stealing
- Adultery
- The Good Teachers
- Drunk
- Mean Time
- Mrs. Lazarus
- Wish
- Rapture
DIRECTIONS IN LATE TWENTIETH- AND EARLY TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY POETRY
- Geoffrey Hill
- from Mercian Hymns
- A Short History of British India (2)
- from The Triumph of Love
- Tony Harrison
- Them & [uz]
- t’Ark
- from V
- from Sonnets for August 1945
- The Morning After
- Tom Raworth
- Out of A Sudden
- Looking for Language
- David Harsent
- Craig Raine
- A Martian Sends a Postcard Home
- Eavan Boland
- Night Feed
- Anna Liffey
- Listen. This is the Noise of Myth
- Against Love Poetry
- Veronica Forrest-Thomson
- James Fenton
- Grace Nichols
- Skanking Englishman Between Trains
- Epilogue
- Love
- White
- Medbh McGuckian
- Slips
- The Sofa
- The Dream-Language of Fergus
- Maggie O’Sullivan
- Linton Kwesi Johnson
- Moniza Alvi
- And If
- How the World Split in Two
- Jean Binta Breeze
- Gwyneth Lewis
- Jackie Kay
- Simon Armitage
- The English
- It Could Be You
- Alice Oswald
- Caitriona O’Reilly
- A Brief History of Light
BERNARDINE EVARISTO
JEANETTE WINTERSON
ZADIE SMITH
APPENDICES
- Reading Poetry
- Maps
- Monarchs and Prime Ministers of Great Britain
- Glossary of Terms
- Texts and Contexts: Chronological Chart (online)
- Bibliography (online)
- Permissions Acknowledgements
- Index of First Lines
- Index of Authors and Titles
Our Editorial Team:
Joseph Black, University of Massachusetts
Leonard Conolly, Trent University
Kate Flint, University of Southern California
Isobel Grundy, University of Alberta
Wendy Lee, New York University
Don LePan, Broadview Press
Roy Liuzza, University of Tennessee
Jerome J. McGann, University of Virginia
Anne Lake Prescott, Barnard College
Barry V. Qualls, Rutgers University
Jason Rudy, University of Maryland
Claire Waters, University of California, Davis
The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Online Component
The anthology’s online component includes hundreds of additional readings and contextual materials. These are not “add-ons” meant to be accorded a subsidiary status, but an integral part of the anthology itself, edited and annotated according to the same principles as the material included in the bound book and ebook volumes.
Companion Site
The anthology’s companion website offers a range of materials, including close to 200 interactive review questions; details on British currency; chronological charts; bibliographies; an audio library with dozens of samples ranging from Old English to the early 20th Century; and more.
A website access code is included with all new copies of the anthology. It is also possible to purchase a code online.
Instructor’s Guide
Located on a separate site, the Broadview Anthology of British Literature Instructor’s Guide is intended to provide support and inspiration for all instructors—from those teaching British literature for the first time to very experienced instructors looking to reinvigorate their courses. Site contents include the following:
- • Approaches to Teaching: Discussions of different ways to teach specific authors and omnibus sections, emphasizing commonly taught authors as well as less-canonical selections
- • More than 200 Quiz Questions
- • Lists of the Contents by Theme and Region to aid in course planning
For an Instructor’s Guide access code, please contact your Broadview Representative or write to reps@broadviewpress.com.
Stand-Alone Editions
Broadview offers more than 400 editions of stand-alone texts, any one of which can be packaged with an anthology volume at no additional cost to the student; further stand-alone editions can be included in the package for a small fee. To view a complete list of available texts, see our full chronology.
Multi-Volume Packages
Multiple volumes of the anthology may be packaged together at a reduced price. To obtain a package ISBN, or to inquire about other discounted package options, please contact your Broadview representative or customerservice@broadviewpress.com. Further discounts may be available for large courses.
Any combination is possible, but preset packages may be found here:
Concise Medieval Period through the Present (Concise Volumes A & B)
The Medieval Period through the Eighteenth Century (Volumes 1–3)
The Age of Romanticism through the Present (Volumes 4–6)
The Eighteenth Century through the Victorian Era (Volumes 3–5)
The Medieval Period through the Early Seventeenth Century (Volumes 1 & 2)
Custom Texts
Broadview Custom Texts are available as ebooks or in attractively printed bound form and offer a flexible and cost-effective alternative to the traditional anthology. Custom texts may be assembled from any materials drawn from the anthology or other Broadview texts (excepting those for which Broadview does not hold copyright). Check out our easy and intuitive Custom Text Builder at this link , or build your text in collaboration with our Custom Text Coordinator at custom@broadviewpress.com.
Comments on The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Twentieth Century and Beyond:
“[The Twentieth Century and Beyond] is better [than the competition] on cultural and social contexts, in its introductions, in its number and quality of images and in the choices of texts beyond the classic ones. … Overall, The Broadview Anthology is an immensely attractive one—adventurous and very wide ranging.” — Enda Duffy, University of California, Santa Barbara
Comments on The Broadview Anthology of British Literature:
“ … sets a new standard by which all other anthologies of British literature will now have to be measured.” — Graham Hammill, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
“With the publication of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, teachers and students in survey and upper-level undergraduate courses have a compelling alternative to the established anthologies by Norton and Longman…. This is a very real intellectual, as well as pedagogical, achievement.” — Nicholas Watson, Harvard University
“… I have been using The Broadview Anthology of British Literature for three years now. I love it—and so do my students!” — Martha Stoddard-Holmes, California State University, San Marcos
“After twenty years of teaching British literature from the Norton anthologies, I’m ready to switch to The Broadview. The introductions to each period are key to teaching a survey course, and those in The Broadview seem to me to be both more accessible to students and more detailed in their portraits of each era than are those of the Norton. And The Broadview’s selection of authors and texts includes everything I like to teach from the Norton, plus a good deal else that’s of real interest.” — Neil R. Davison, Oregon State University
“Norton’s intros are good; The Broadview’s are better, with greater clarity and comprehension, as well as emphasis upon how the language and literature develop, both reacting or responding to and influencing or modifying the cultural, religious/philosophical, political, and socio-economic developments of Britain. The historian and the linguist in me thoroughly enjoyed the flow and word-craftsmanship. If you have not considered the anthology for your courses, I recommend that you do so.” — Robert J. Schmidt, Tarrant County College