A survey of the English prose, poetry and drama of Great Britain and Ireland from earliest times to the 1980s.

Derived from the highly successful Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature, this book traces the course of English literature from the earliest Anglo-Saxon poetry to the present day. Each chapter is written by an expert, and contains a lively discussion of the most importantdevelopments and figures of a key literary period. Major figures such as Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Wordsworth, Eliot, and Auden are treated in depth, and the story is brought right up to date with discussion of contemporary authors such as Seamus Heaney, Martin Amis and Angela Carter. This new edition has been extended to include coverage of the 1980s and 90s, and the Further Reading sections for all the essays have been revised and updated.