The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Ninth Edition) (Vol. 1)

(Please note: this is a review of the edition, not of English Literature - or the seller of my copy.)There are some advantages to this 9th ed over the 8th. The Anglo-Saxon selection is greatly improved: the translations now are all in verse, and give much more sense of the originals as poetry. Some changes are an ambiguous blessing: we now get the whole of Utopia, which sounds like a good idea, but is more than most teachers will want to include in a survey class (so now we have to do our own selections instead). Other changes are a big mistake, like the new text of Margery Kempe - haphazardly semi-modernized, and really unusable.The best thing, apart from the Anglo-Saxon selection, is the new font, which is bigger and clearer than that of the 8th ed. For choice of texts, I'm inclined to prefer the 6th ed., which included more from the Canterbury Tales (the beautiful Franklin's Tale), and the 7th ed., which included some strange and wonderful Ranter writing - very briefly fashionable in academia.

Honestly, these Amazon questions about this book are kind of irrelevant because this is a collection of early British literature; there are a lot of stories in this set. I used this as my text for Intro to Early English Literature. We read a lot of stories. I plan on keeping this book set because I am an English Major, and it's great for reference and historical anecdotes. I have had to purchase Norton Anthologies before and my biggest complaint was how big and bulky they are. I would have to carry it to class every day, but not ever need more than 30 pages in any one lecture. That's a lot of weight to my backpack, and I'm not a young student. I've seen students carry multiple large copies around for different English classes! This version though came broken up into three different sections, and I liked it much better because then I could just take the necessary volume to class and not lug around as much weight.

I decided to try renting the book I need for my class instead of buying it, and am sorely disappointed. Instead of receiving the described item, I only received Volume A, The Middle Ages. Thankfully I ordered it early enough, and hopefully I can get the copy I need before my class begins next week.

The product description states Volume A, B AND C. Shipment contained only Volume C. This created a major headache for the first day of class. Now I'm having to pay to expedite shipping from another distributor in order to get the book in time for the first assignment.

I purchased the Kindle Edition of Volume One, and it looks like it mirrors the book exactly. The format is not exactly suited to tablet screens, but at least it doesn't split the page into segments to fit. The pages in the kindle book seem to match up with the physical book. It has everything that it is supposed to include, and it is a pretty good price for the set. If you buy the physical set new from Amazon; however, I think they might offer the Kindle Matchbook option. I'm not sure about that, but it could be a good deal.

okay, so i was a little hesitant getting this book as it comes in as a set of three, Vol A, B, and Ci was worried that it would be different that the one whole book, revised or edited in any way.now, it does have a different ISBN number than the whole book does, that is not an issue here.it wasnt, if anything i love that its separated, it means when i go to class my book is lighter and i have less weight to carry around.the book came in on time, packaged nicely for such a heavy book.i have had this book for over a month now and it happened to be cheaper than the whole book and man did i luck outits great. i would definitely recommend, and buy from them again.

I needed this as a textbook and rented it through Amazon instead of buying/renting it from the bookstore. What a difference in cost!! It would have cost at least $100 from the bookstore (used), and I was able to rent it for under $30! So pleased. It did have some writing in it, but it was all in pencil.Overall, renting this book was very much worth the extremely reduced cost, the few marks did not hinder my work at all. I would highly recommend renting this textbook from Amazon to any fellow students.

Like other reviewers, I received a single volume rather than the expected multi-volume edition. When I began the return, like others here, I realized that Norton publishes both the multi-volume edition (alluded to in the title description) and the single-volume phone-book edition and the vendor sent the single edition. While it's the same content, that should be made explicit in the title.

Excellent. It seems pricey, but not when you see how many books and authors are included. It's great for Uni work and much better than buying all of the individual works. The covers are quite thin and therefore a bit fragile for such a big book, especially if you use it often, so it may be worth covering it to keep it in better condition. Again, if using for work or uni, the online access (via password inside the cover) is really useful for understanding the texts better, with quizzes, more detailed information, and revision resources. The whole book is quite bulky, so I recommend this ABC version, as it's split into 3 volumes. Much easier to carry around and read comfortably.

This was a perfectly good book, with many, good texts in it, including the entirety of Paradise Lost, and also the Canterbury Tales, and other fascinating works. The only downside is that they didn't get the best translations. The medieval texts, are kept with the older wording, where every word has to have a footnote in order to be understood. Shakespeare is easily understandable, but other texts like "By housbondrie, of swich as God hir sente, / She foond hirself and eek hire doghtren two." This is really hard to understand, and more research is then needed on a modern translation on the Internet. But other than that the book was really helpful on my literature course and came within the alloted time. It's worth having these books on your bookshelves.

I only bought this as a requirement for studies.

I thought it was divided into 3 volumes (A,B and C) but it's a complete edition. Still very satisfied of my purchase: it arrived quickly and in perfect conditions.

as advertised.