The new edition of this comprehensive anthology by a well-known literary critic, scholar, and teacher continues to bring a new awareness of how the world of fiction, poetry, and drama is expanding in a multicultural, global, and electronic environment. Authors represented include a high proportion of women as well as writers from non-Western cultures and from a variety of American cultural traditions. For in-depth reading, “career study” sections in fiction and poetry focus on the work of James Baldwin, Alice Munro, Gary Snyder, and Adrienne Rich, while the drama section includes two plays by Sophocles, as well as Shakespeare's Hamlet and The Tempest. In all, the text includes 46 short stories, 14 plays, and 345 poems.

Literature is presented in reader-friendly steps to help students toward the fullest response to literature. Students learn how they can sharpen their experience of great literature and share it by converting their responses into writing, using discussion to help generate well-supported persuasive essays for composition.

Chapter examples and questions show students the analytical tools and procedural steps for experiencing and writing about literature, while case-study models and critical essays help them compose their responses in writing. Chapters on writing about fiction, poetry, and drama help students make connections between the reading and writing process.