Customer Reviews

The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Beginnings to 1865

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Be careful, you are only buying volume 1, there is another volume, but you would never know that just reading the (description).

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.

--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.

Hello, people. As the General Editor of the new edition of the Norton American anthology, I need to point out that some of the reviews in this section are about the English lit. anthology, and that the American anthology is considerably updated from the last (1994) edition. Along with more work by the canonical writers are many new women writers, etc. etc. Hope you like it!

I really love all the Norton Anthology series. They are really awesome textbooks. I have this one, and it was used at my two year college. I really like the way that the books is made, and I also like the selection of literature that the editors put into the book. I am a English-Secondary Education major, and I hope that whatever high school that I teach at, I hope that will consider getting Norton books.

This book is overpoweringly neato. It's got everything from William Bradford to Cotton Mather to Thomas Jefferson to Irving to Thoreau. All in one little (rather large) book.
It's got alla the stuff ya'd want to quote from and sound pompously smart about and stuff.
Well, it doesn't have Shakespeare. But like, he's not American. So that makes sense, doesn't it? Mmm-hmm.

Other than that, it's quite worth yer while. =)