The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland

Citation

Carter, R., & McRae, J. (2017). The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Chapter Summary

The third edition runs to about 620 pages. Its main text is divided into eight period chapters, from Old English to the twenty-first century, followed by timelines, a select bibliography, a "Key Texts" section and an index. Routledge's description stresses three features that run through the whole book: a narrative of the growth of literary writing and its conventions; the inclusion of literature from the geographical and cultural margins of Britain and Ireland; and language notes that relate changes in English to the literature of each stage. Extensive quotation from poetry, prose and drama carries the narrative. The edition is linked to a companion website with additional language notes and key-text analyses, lists of Booker, Costa and Nobel prize winners and an A–Z of authors and topics. The page ranges below are those of the 2016 ebook as registered with Crossref.

Chapter 1: The Beginnings of English: Old and Middle English 600–1485

The opening chapter (about 50 pages) covers the period from Anglo-Saxon poetry to the end of the fifteenth century. Emma Mason's endorsement for the publisher describes the book's span as running from Cædmon's Hymn onwards, and Beowulf and Chaucer are among the works it treats; the publisher names Chaucer among the authors whose texts receive closer analysis.

Chapter 2: The Renaissance: 1485–1660

At about 60 pages, the chapter runs from the Tudor period through the seventeenth century to the Restoration. Shakespeare is one of the four authors the publisher highlights for key-text analysis.

Chapter 3: Restoration to Romanticism: 1660–1789

This chapter, about 75 pages, covers the long eighteenth century from the Restoration to the eve of the French Revolution. Margaret Sönmez's review records that the second edition added a section on women writers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Chapter 4: The Romantic Period: 1789–1832

The Romantic chapter, about 50 pages, spans the years from the French Revolution to the Reform Act. Keats is among the authors the publisher names for key-text analysis.

Chapter 5: The Nineteenth Century: 1832–1900

The Victorian chapter runs to about 65 pages and covers poetry, prose and drama up to the end of the century; Oscar Wilde and George Eliot appear among the most frequent names in the Google Books index of terms.

Chapters 6–7: The Twentieth Century: 1900–45; The Twentieth Century: 1945 to 2000

The twentieth century receives two of the longest chapters, about 85 and 100 pages, divided at the end of the Second World War. The first covers the years of T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Yeats and Woolf (all frequent names in the index of terms), and Virginia Woolf is the fourth author named for key-text analysis; the second covers post-war writing in Britain and Ireland, with Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, Martin Amis and Carol Ann Duffy among the writers the index shows as frequently discussed.

Chapter 8: The Twenty-First Century

New in the third edition, this chapter (about 40 pages) surveys novels, drama and poetry written since 2000. Mason's endorsement describes the book as reaching as far as Kazuo Ishiguro.

Back matter: Timelines; Select bibliography; Key Texts

About 20 pages of timelines set literary works against historical events, followed by a select bibliography and a section of key texts before the index.

Key Concepts

Approach (all chapters)

• Literary tradition and convention: the book's central story is the growth of literary writing, its traditions and its changing characteristics over 1,400 years.
• Language notes: short sections in each period that connect changes in the English language with the literature written at the time.
• Literature from the margins: writing from the geographical and cultural edges of Britain and Ireland, including Irish and Scottish writing, set within the main narrative.
• Dialect, regionalism and nationhood: according to Mason's endorsement, questions the book treats alongside genre, form and vocabulary.

Periods (Chapters 1–8)

• Old and Middle English: the literature of the language from Anglo-Saxon times to 1485.
• Renaissance and Restoration: the period divisions of 1485, 1660 and 1789 that frame early modern literature.
• Romantic and Victorian: the chapters divided at 1832.
• Twentieth and twenty-first centuries: modernism, post-war writing and the newest chapter on writing after 2000.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• The whole history in one volume. Reviewing the second edition on LINGUIST List (2001), Margaret Sönmez found it hard to name another book that sets British literary and language history from the earliest to the latest times within the same covers, and valued the way it lets readers see English literature as a continuous process rather than a sequence of separate periods.
• Language and literature together. The language notes are the book's distinctive feature. Sönmez judged them clear and detailed enough to be genuinely useful for literature students who avoid books about language, and reported that a foreign doctoral student found them among the most used parts of the first edition.
• Brought up to date. The third edition adds a chapter on the twenty-first century and, according to the publisher, covers recent developments in literary and cultural theory; the endorsements by Theo D'haen and Suriyan Panlay emphasise its accessibility.
• Support beyond the book. The timelines, select bibliography, key texts and companion website help with revision and with finding authors not covered in a course.

Limitations

• A survey more than a history. Sönmez argued that the second edition was better described as a survey than a history: it presented material chronologically but offered little depth of historical analysis, and some generalisations, for example on the Reformation, oversimplified. Readers of the third edition should check historical claims against a dedicated history.
• Reference rather than argument. The same review found the style clear but conventionally impersonal, with few critical judgements to agree or disagree with, and thought it worked better as background reading than as a set course book.
• Breadth over depth. With eight chapters for more than 1,400 years, individual authors receive limited space; Sönmez pointed more advanced students to fuller histories and to the period introductions of the Norton anthology.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the British literature course this is the reference history, to be kept at hand throughout. It is longer and more systematic than Jonathan Bate's English Literature: A Very Short Introduction, which raises questions about what the subject is rather than tracing its chronology; read Bate first for orientation and use Carter and McRae for the sequence of periods and authors. Andrew Sanders's Short Oxford History of English Literature covers a similar span as a single-author narrative with a continuous argument; students who want a more interpretive history can read Sanders and keep Carter and McRae for the language notes and the timelines.

The Norton Anthology of English Literature supplies the texts that this history describes, and its period introductions overlap with the chapters here. For close study of individual works such as Paradise Lost and Middlemarch, the Norton Critical Editions on the list provide full texts and criticism; Raymond Williams's The Country and the City shows what a sustained critical argument about one theme across the same history looks like.

How to Use This Book

The book is meant for students of English literature and of English language, including readers studying English as a foreign language, who need a single reference covering the whole history. No prior literary history is assumed. Do not read it from cover to cover: read the relevant period chapter before each block of a survey course, then return to it as a reference while reading the primary texts.

Pay particular attention to the language notes, which are where the book differs from other histories, and use them to connect what you read with the changing state of the language. Use the timelines to place authors, the select bibliography to find further reading, and the companion website for the additional language notes, key-text analyses and prize lists. Because the narrative is necessarily brief on each writer, follow up any author you are writing about in a fuller critical source.