The Bedford Anthology of World Literature, Compact Edition, Volume 2 The Modern World (1650-Present)

Designed to offer a clear, concise, and accessible way to explore the familiar and unfamiliar territories of world literature, this two-volume version ofThe Bedford Anthology of World Literatureoffers students and teachers a broad and carefully balanced selection of literary works supported by extensive historical background and generous contextual materials.

Paul Davis (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin), professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico, has been the recipient of several teaching awards and academic honors, including that of Master teacher. He has taught courses since 1962 in composition, rhetoric, and nineteenth-century literature and has written and edited many scholarly books, including The Penguin Dickens Companion (1999), Dickens A to Z (1998), and The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge (1990). He has also written numerous scholarly and popular articles on solar energy and Victorian book illustration. His most recent book is Critical Companion to Charles Dickens (2007).

Gary Harrison (Ph.D., Stanford University), professor and director of graduate studies at the University of New Mexico, has won numerous fellowships and awards for scholarship and teaching. He has taught courses in world literature, British Romanticism, and literary theory at the University of New Mexico since 1987. Harrison's publications include a critical study of William Wordsworth, Wordsworth's Vagrant Muse: Poetry, Poverty, and Power (1994); as well as several articles on topics such as John Clare's poetry, Romanticism and Ecology, nineteenth-century culture, and teaching world literature.

David M. Johnson (Ph.D., University of Connecticut), professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico, has taught courses in world literature, mythology, the Bible as literature, philosophy and literature, and creative writing since 1965. He has written, edited, and contributed to numerous scholarly books and collections of poetry, including Fire in the Fields (1996) and Lord of the Dawn: The Legend of Quetzalcoatl (1987). He has also published scholarly articles, poetry, and translations of Nahuatl myths. His most recent book of poetry is Rebirth of Wonder: Poems of The Common Life (University of New Mexico Press, 2007).

John F. Crawford (Ph.D., Columbia University; postdoctoral studies, Yale University), associate professor of English emeritus at the University of New Mexico, has taught medieval, world, and other literature courses since 1965 at a number of other institutions including California Institute of Technology and Hunter College and Herbert Lehmann College of CUNY. The publisher of West End Press, an independent literary press with 120 titles, Crawford has also edited This Is About Vision: Interviews with Southwestern Writers (1990) and written articles on multicultural literature of the Southwest.