A Short History of English Literature

Thoroughly updated, this book remains the best overall survey of English literature available.

• Brings this successful book up to date with new material on, among others, Caryl Churchill, Brian Friel, Martin Amis and Graham Swift
• Very accessible

1. The Age of Chaucer.

2. Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose.

3. The Beginnings of Drama.

4. Shakespeare.

5. Stuart Drama.

6. Poetry - Donne to Milton.

7. The Restoration.

8. The Eighteenth Century.

9. The Rise of the Novel.

10. The Birth of Romanticism.

11. Romantics and Anti-Romantics.

12. The Early Victorian Novelists.

13. The Early Victorian Poets.

14. The Late Victorians.

15. The Birth of Modern Poetry.

16. The Birth of the Modern Novel.

17. Depression and War.

18. Twentieth-Century Drama.

19. From the `Fifties to the Nineties'.

Index.

Robert Barnard is a former Professor of English Literature at the University of Tromso, Norway. He is the author of many crime novels, as well as studies of the work of Charles Dickens and Agatha Christie. Thoroughly updated to include writers such as Caryl Churchill, Brian Friel, Martin Amis and Graham Swift, this book remains the best overall survey of English literature available.

Robert Barnard looks selectively at the most important writers within each period from the time of Chaucer, and focuses on one or two of their works in detail. He deals briefly with the earlier periods and more fully with the last two centuries, moving right to the present with a detailed coverage of the post-war novel and theatre. In the best sense eclectic, his book draws together history, criticism, established ideas and fresh views.