This volume contains a selection of the best and most characteristic writings, in diverse literary genres, of major English authors. The present edition has been expanded so that it includes not only the thirty-four authors in the pre-ceding edition, but also four additional authors, the medieval drama Noah's Flood, and three sections of notable lyric poems by writers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The texts and editorial materials are reprinted (with a few exceptions) from the sixth edition of the two-volume Norton Anthology of English Literature. There is a biographical and critical headnote for each author, as well as an introduction to each period that sets forth the historical and social contexts of the literature and indicates the relations of individual authors to literary and historical developments in their era.