The Routledge History of Literature in English : Britain and Ireland, 2nd Edition

This is a completely updated and expanded second edition of the wide-ranging and accessible Routledge History of Literature in English. It covers the main developments in the history of British and Irish literature and has extensive accompanying language notes which explore the interrelationships between language and literature. With a span from AD 600 to the present day, it emphasises the growth of literary writing, its traditions, conventions and changing characteristics, and includes literature from the margins, both geographical and cultural. Extensive quotations from poetry, prose and drama underpin the narrative.

The second edition covers recent developments in literary and cultural theory and has the following features :

• Additional or extended material on post-colonial writers, and the literature of the 1990s
• An expanded Timeline with Booker, Whitbread, and Nobel prize winners
• Additions to the well-received language notes which include 'Shakespeare's language', 'Reading the language of theatre and drama', 'New modes of modern writing' and 'International and rotten Englishes'
• An expanded Timeline with Booker, Whitbread, and Nobel prize winners.

List of illustrations    
Foreword    

Chapter 1 : The Beginnings of English : Old and Middle English 600-1485    
Chapter 2 : The Renaissance : 1485-1660    
Chapter 3 : Restoration to Romanticism : 1660-1789    
Chapter 4 : The Romantic Period : 1789-1832    
Chapter 5 : The Nineteenth Century : 1832-1900    
Chapter 6 : The Twentieth Century : 1900-45    
Chapter 7 : The Twentieth Century : 1945 to the present    

Winners of the Booker Prize    
Winners of the Whitbread Prize    
British and Irish winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature    
Timelines    
Acknowledgements    
Select bibliography    
Index