For Introduction to Literature courses and Freshman Composition courses that emphasize writing about literature.

Message:  Roberts has the best coverage of writing about literature.  Complete coverage of writing about each element and a total of 23 student essays with accompanying commentary ensure student comprehension of writing about literature and therefore, produce better student papers. 

Story:  When Edgar Roberts taught literature and composition many years ago, a large part of his course work involved essay writing assignments.  He would dedicate a substantial amount of his class time explaining how the students should prepare their writing assignments and he discovered that the more he described to his students what he wanted, and the longer he explained things, the better the final essays turned out to be.  He realized that there was a direct correlation between the way he made his assignments and the quality of student work he received. 

However, giving his students such explicit essay-writing directions was taking up too much of his classroom time.  At that point, Professor Roberts started to write and hand out directions, thus saving him valuable classroom time. Over the years, he tried and tested each assignment in his own classes.  In addition to writing coverage, Professor Roberts recognized that literature classrooms needed both writing about literature instruction and an anthology to meet the needs of the literature and composition course. 

Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, Compact Edition is founded on the principles of writing about literature.  It is not an afterthought and it is not treated as a separate chapter or appendix; but rather, it is the carefully integrated philosophy of Professor Roberts’ approach to teaching literature and composition. 

In addition to his own contributions to the book, Professor Roberts has also made innumerable changes and improvements based on both student questions and student writing as well as from professor feedback.  To this day, each new edition is revised and perfected based on professor and student needs to meet the changing needs of today’s students.