This definitive Companion provides a critical overview of literary culture in the period from John Milton to William Blake. Its broad chronological range responds to recent reshapings of the canon and identifies new directions of study.

The Companion is composed of over fifty contributions from leading scholars in the field, its essays offer students a comprehensive and accessible survey of the field from a wide range of perspectives. It also, however, gives researchers and faculty the opportunity to update their acquaintance with new critical and scholarly work.

The volume meets the needs of an intellectual world increasingly given over to inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary study by covering philosophical, political, cultural and historical writing, as well as literary writing. Unlike other similar volumes, the main body of the Companion consists of readings of individual texts, both those commonly and less commonly studied.

About the Author
David Womersley has been a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Jesus College, Oxford since 1984. He has published widely on English Literature from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. His previous publications include, Restoration Drama: An Anthology (Blackwell 2000), Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1994), Gibbon: Bicentenary Essays (1997), Augustan Critical Writing (1997), The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1988).

Reviews
"This volume is No. 7 in the Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture series and it more than comes up to the standard of the previous six. The whole volume is a formidable piece of work, not one to be read start to finish, but one for specialists to consult and study. Such consultation is made easier by the provision of a good index."
Reference Reviews

"This collection's 55 original essays offer general critical introductions to specific periods, topics, genres, and works in English literature, roughly 1640s to 1790s. Indexing points to other major works and topics not treated separately. The essays on specific works vary in scope and perspective: some address only themes, others cover critical reception; some keep great critical distance, others offer close readings. For most academic collections, lower-division through faculty."
Choice

"A Companion to Literature from Milton to Blake, like its renaissance counterpart, is a bumper compendium of fifty-five essays on contexts, texts, periods and genres[...]There are numerous helpful pieces..."
A Journal of English Language and Literature

Book Information
ISBN 9780631212850
Author David Womersley
Format Hardback
Page Count 632
Imprint Wiley-Blackwell
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 1297g
Dimensions(mm) 264mm * 185mm * 41mm