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 enlarge | Creator: Stephen Greenblatt
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $60.00
Buy Used: $39.21
You Save: $20.79 (35%)
New (50) Used (127) from $39.21
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 1169
Media: Paperback
Edition: 8th
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 2904
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 2.6
ISBN: 0393925315
Dewey Decimal Number: 820.8
EAN: 9780393925319
ASIN: 0393925315
Publication Date: October 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Required Textbook February 15, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This was a required textbook for a college course. Once again I saved $$$$ by buying my textbooks, new and used, at Amazon and another major on-line auction house. Why anyone would line up like lemmings to get slaughter by the high prices and poor service at college bookstores is beyond my meager comprehension. While everyone else was spending hours in line holding 20 pounds of books, I was one clicking and having my books in a couple days.
 Ahh! Get a cup of tea, find a cozy spot, and settle in... December 23, 2007
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
If you're a book lover, how can you not love a book like this? It was my required reading for a literature class, and I was all too happy to have an excuse to buy it. Satisfyingly fat at 3000 pages, it exudes that delicious book smell when you flip through it, and its matte-sheen cover feels good in your hands and protects its sizable contents quite well.
For me, this was worth getting just for Seamus Heaney's wonderful translation of Beowulf. You can smell the ocean and hear the armor clank as this readable version places you right there in the sixth century. Along with the usual excerpts from such works as the Canterbury Tales, you get complete versions of King Lear, Twelfth Night, Utopia, and Paradise Lost. After looking over the excerpts from Gulliver's Travels, it appears that sections 1,2, and 4 are presented complete, with only some material edited from section 3, so you get almost all of that, too. The footnotes for this, and all the other works, are enormously useful.
I have a few gripes about the book, however these don't merit the subtraction of a star in the rating. First - this book is SO heavy. Obviously there was no way around this in publishing, because to put this many pages on good-quality paper the laws of physics are working against you. But I have literally suffered backache from bringing it around with me in my book bag, and have had to sorrowfully leave it at home at times because of this. Second, I wish it included a clear list of which major works are presented complete, for those of us who want to make sure to read the whole thing. My final beef is with the editorial introduction to The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale from the Canterbury Tales. Reading this rant about "antifeminist writings" was like stepping from the high halls of classic academia into the junior-college classroom of some washed-up 1970s holdover. I HATE agenda in my education, and in my opinion, applying 20th century (yes, 20th) sentiments to 14th century literature is anachronistic and inappropriate. But such is the state of education these days, and here is your evidence in a volume that should have known better. However, that has been the only thing I have come upon that irritated me.
Buying this book is a great way to get a bunch of classics all at once, and there is so much to it that you can enjoy a long read or a short read anytime you want, once you find a way to work around its mass. I look forward to the years of reading pleasure I'll get from my copy.
One big book. September 21, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
There seems to be nothing wrong or displeasing about this book aside from its overall dimensions. The stories are assembled well. There is even a nice history about the authors in some instances. Like I said previous, its one gigantic book. I think it would have been perfect to maybe cut it in half, labling them "volume 1a" and "volume 1b". Oh well, its still a pretty good book.
30% saved September 17, 2007
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
I saved at least 30% on this book compaird to the schools' bookstore asking price.
What can I say... August 26, 2007
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is the definitive collection of what is widely regarded as the best early English literature. How can this not get a five? Beowulf to Milton.
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