English Literature: A Very Short Introduction

English Literature: A Very Short Introduction discusses why literature matters, how narrative works, and what is distinctly English about English literature. Jonathan Bate considers how we determine the content of the field, and looks at the three major kinds of imaginative literature - English poetry, English drama and The English novel.

Jonathan Bate is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick. Among his many books are John Clare: A Biography (Farrar Straus Giroux), which won Britain's two oldest literary prizes, the Hawthomden and the James Tait Black, a best-selling book on Shakespeare for the general reader, The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador, UK and OUP, USA), and a major intellectual biography of Shakespeare in the cultural context of the Elizabethan Age (The Soul of the Age. He is also chief editor of The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works (Macmillan UK/Random House Modern Library USA).

1: Once upon a time
2: What it is
3: When it began
4: The study of English
5: Periods and movements
6: Among the English Poets
7: Shakespeare and dramatic literature
8: Aspects of the English novel
9: The Englishness of English literature
Further Reading