New to the second edition of volume two of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature is a revised translation of Thomas More's Utopia, prepared by William P. Weaver of Baylor University. Other additions include a number of sonnets from Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and a selection of poems by Isabella Whitney. Milton's Samson Agonistes is now included, and four books from Paradise Lost are now included in their entirety.

With this volume as with the others, material continues to be added on an ongoing basis to the website component of the anthology.

Of the ten general editors, Joseph Black and Anne Lake Prescott have focused on volume 2 particularly; they are professors at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) and at Barnard College, respectively.