A more wide ranging selection of literary works include new selections by Anne Bradstreet, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, Fanny Fern, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Marianne Moore, Sterling Brown, Eudora Welty, August Wilson, and Yusef Komunyakaa.
A continued emphasis on complete works. This shorter edition includes the complete text of Rebecca Harding Davis’s
Life in the Iron Mills and Frederick Douglass’
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass as well as portions of extended works of nonfiction that can be effectively excerpted such as: Benjamin Franklin’s
Autobiography, Olaudah Equiano’s
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Booker T. Washington’s
Up from Slavery, and W.E.B. Du Bois’s
The Souls of Black Folk. All poems, stories, sketches, and essays are printed in their entirety.
New Writers on Writers sections in the second half of the anthology put writers in conversation with each other, through brief commentaries by one writer on another, such as Toni Morrison’s observations about the most famous Southern writer, William Faulkner. These units help students understand the complex ways in which writers, read, influence, and inspire one another.
New American Contexts section on "The Salem Witchcraft Trials" includes illustrations and the writings of Deodat Lawson, Cotton Mather, Thomas Brattle, and Samuel Sewell, illuminating the most notorious episode in the history of colonial New England.
More value options than ever before for assigning the novels of your choice in print or e-book format. For maximum flexibility in course planning and for the sake of pleasurable reading, key novels and novellas are published separately as part of the Bedford College Edition series. Titles such as The Scarlet Letter, Benito Cereno, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Awakening are available in print or as Bedford E-Books to Go, which are downloadable to e-readers, and can be economically packaged with the anthology. The first print novel (an $8 value) can be packaged for free; subsequent print volumes can be packaged for $3 net. All E-Books to Go can be packaged for free. See the Literary Reprints Tab for more information.