The Fourth Edition of The Longman Anthology of British Literature continues its tradition of presenting works in the historical context in which they were written. This fresh approach includes writers from the British Isles, underrepresented female authors,
“
Perspectives
”
sectionsthatshed light on the period as a whole and link with immediately surrounding works to help illuminate a theme, “And Its Time” clusters that illuminate a specific cultural moment or a debate to which an author is responding, and “Responses” in which later authors respond to one or more texts from earlier works. New works include William Baldwin’s
Beware the Cat
(the 1
st
English novel), Edmund Spenser’s
The Faerie Queene, Books 6
and the
Two Cantos of Mutability
and William Shakespeare’s
Othello
and
King Lear.