The classic survey of American literature from its origins to the present, The Norton Anthology of American Literature offers the work of 212 writers -- 38 newly included. From trickster tales of the Native American tradition to bestsellers of early women writers to postmodernism, the new edition conveys the diversity of American literature. Thirty works are included in their entirety, among them The Scarlet Letter, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Huckleberry Finn, The Awakening, A Streetcar Named Desire, and, new to this edition, Willa Cather's My Antonia, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl", and David Mamet's Glengarry, Glen Ross.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
misleading,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Beginnings to 1865 (Paperback)
Be careful, you are only buying volume 1, there is another volume, but you would never know that just reading the (description).
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
great selection of traditional literature,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Beginnings to 1865 (Paperback)
The Norton Anthologies are still the best selections of traditional literature, although there has been a decline in quality as the editors anthologize non-mainstream work to satisfy the demands of what Harold Bloom calls the School of Resentment. Give us more Auden and less Ginsberg. Also, the editors' notes are often too indulgent. It is the editors' own assertions that they are not supposed to be shaping students' interpretations, but then there are remarks such as the one in the headnote to Matthew Arnold, criticizing Arnold for his negative criticism of Chaucer. This, dear readers, has no place in an anthology. Again, a footnote to the last line of "Dover Beach" reads, "Perhaps a reference to contemporary European wars, or perhaps a reference to no war in particular." If they aren't sure, this footnote is an inexcuseable lapse in editorial judgment. And do we really need an eight or nine page introduction to Herman Melville, covering every book he ever wrote? (Imagine devoting the same amount of space to covering the minutiae of Byron or of Henry James.) To summarize my position, though, the Nortons are still very good, but they could be just a little better.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I've just finished teaching with this one--,
This review is from: The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Beginnings to 1865 (Paperback)
--and, as some have said, it _does_ lack a number of things you'd like to have. But it's hard to blame W.W. Norton (as one poster does) for the shortage of Hemingway and Fitzgerald when the real culprit is Scribner's, which gives anthologists extremely limited rights: one story from each writer. (The writer's original publisher is also to blame for the amount of T.S. Eliot here: no more than 1000 lines allowed.)One more thing: I'm ditching this in the future for texts with fewer footnotes. _Norton_ needs to avoid overdetermining readers' responses with interpretive notes.
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