Customer Reviews

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 1 B: The SixteenthCentury/The Early Seventeenth Century

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This is an excellent reference guide for the English Literature
of the 1600s and 1700s. There is an exhaustive coverage of
the following works:
o Caedmon's Hymn
o Beowulf
o Geoffrey Chaucer
o Middle Age Lyrics
o Sir Thomas Mallory
o Medieval Attitudes Toward Life on Earth
o Christopher Marlowe
o Sir Thomas Moore
o Shakespeare
o Sir Walter Ralegh
o John Donne
o Robert Herrick
o George Herbert
o John Milton
o Richard Lovelace
o Samuel Butler
o Jonathan Swift
o Alexander Pope
o Samuel Johnson
o James Boswell
o Restoration Literature of the 18th Century

Here is a paragraph from "The Wife of Bath's Tale":
"The wise astrologen daun Ptolomce,
That saith this proverbe in his Almageste:
' Of alle men his wisdom is the hyeste
That rekketh nat who hath the world in honde.
By this proverbe thou shalt understonde."

This work is perfect for majors of English literature and
college courses in literature. A beauty of the work is that
it is written in the original English dialect of the
centuries represented. Critiques of this work alone could
fill a dozen or so academic dissertations.The book in my personal library
is an earlier version. There are many subsequent editions. In each subsequent edition, the author has made some additions/deletions.
The subject matter of my review is a late 60s/early 70s version of the book. Check on the Amazon.com for "used books for sale" to acquire the
earlier version.

I had to get these for class a couple years ago and I regretted selling them back because I loved the material so much. Tons of great literature included.

Volume 1B of the Norton Anthology of English Literature covers much of the Sixteenth Century and the beginning of the Seventeenth Century. Included in this book are works from:

John Skelton

Sir Thomas More

Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder

William Tyndale

John Calvin

Anne Askew

John Foxe

Richard Hooker

Roger Ascham

Henrey Howard, Earl of Surrey

Sir Thomas Hoby

Queen Elizabeth

Arthur Golding

George Gascoigne

Isabella Whitney

Edmund Spenser - The Faerie Queen and the Amoretti

Sir Walter Ralegh

John Lyly

Sir Philip Sidney

Fulke Greville, Lord Baron Brooke

Robert Southwelle

Mary (Sidney) Herbert, Countess of Pembroke

Samuel Daniel

Michael Drayton

Christopher Marlowe - Hero and Leander, The Passionate Sheperd to his Love, and Doctor Faustus

William Shakespeare - Twelth Night, King Lear, and selected sonnets

Thomas Campion

Thomas Nashe

John Donne

Aemilia Lanyer

Ben Johnson - The Masque of Blackness, Volpone or the Fox, and selected poems and prose

Mary Wroth

John Webster

Elizabeth Cary

Francis Bacon

Martha Moulsworth

Rachel Speght

Robert Burton

Sir Thomas Browne

Izaak Walton

Thomas Hobbes - Including Leviathan

George Herbert

Henrey Vaughan

Richard Crashaw

Robert Herrick

Thomas Carew

Sir John Suckling

Richard Lovelace

Edmund Waller

Abraham Cowley

Katherine Philips

Andrew Marvell

Lucy Hutchinson

Lady Anne Halkett

John Lilburne

Gerrard Winstanley

Anna Trapnel

Abiezer Coppe

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon

Thomas Traherne

Margaret Cavendish

John Milton - Paradise Lost, selected Poems and Sonnets

Alexander Pope - The Rape of the Lock and An Essay on Man

Samuel Johnson - The Vanity of Human Wishes

Thomas Gray - Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

It is an adequate anthology, with good bindings for a softcover book. The text is small and somewhat cramped and the paper is thin and light, as is the standard for anthologies of this size. If you are looking for a specific work or works, it is probabably more rewarding and convenient to get an individual volume for the specified work. If, however, you need a decent survey of the period's literature (without too much depth concerning any one author) this is a fine, inexpensive volume.