This anthology comprising eighteen essays provides glimpses of mainstream British literature as well as surveys of American, African, and Canadian writings in English, and in a way a view of the practice of English writing across the globe. Here are fine analyses and sharp critique of, as well as fine sensitive response to, the plays of Shakespeare, the poetry of Dryden, Wordsworth, Keats, the biographical works of E.M. Forster, the drama and poetry of T.S. Eliot, in addition to a glimpse of some plays by modern British playwrights. At the same time it also offers critical insights into American authors like Langston Hughes and Ernest Hemingway, African author like Achebe, or a Canadian Booker winner of recent times like Yann Martin. There are discussions of Naipaul’s novel and travelogue. Another unique feature of the present anthology is a small bunch of essays which take up the related issues of aesthetics and literary criticism, and modern trends and movements in the domain of ideas, thus reminding of once again that literature, indeed, can never be an isolated phenomenon. Students, scholars and general readers of English literature will find the anthology both useful and enjoyable.

Table of Contents:
1. Women in the Major Comedies and Tragedies of Shakespeare —NIJUKTA PADHI 2. Women in Shakespeare’s Last Plays: Tests and Trials —NIJUKTA PADHI 3. Heroic Intention, Unheroic Age: Dryden’s His Sacred Majesty: Panegyric on His Coronation —VINOD KUMAR SINGH 4. Nature: The World of Wordsworth —N. SHARADA IYER 5. Keats: The ‘Brief Twilight’ and the ‘Last Oozings’: A Medical Perspective —RAMA KUNDU 6. Eliot’s Theory of Tradition and His Dramatic Practice —JYOTI V. ZAHIR 7. Intertextuality in The Waste Land —ASIT KR. BISWAS 8. E.M. Forster as Biographer —VINITA JHA 9. The Efficacy of Language as Motif in Drama —T.M.J. INDRA MOHAN 10. Langston Hughes: The Shining Star of the Harlem Renaissance —NISHA GUPTA 11. The Hemingway Hero: A Riddle —SUSHMA SHARMA 12. Things Fall Apart: An Archetypal Novel —M.A. NARE 13. A Critical Study of V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas —ASHOK KUMAR BACHCHAN 14. V.S. Naipaul’s Travelogues: A Study —ASHOK KUMAR BACHCHAN 15. Magic Realism in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi —BHAGABAT NAYAK 16. Commonwealth and ‘Third World’ English Literatures: A Sociolinguistic Profile —QAISER ZOHA ALAM 17. Defining Postmodernism —ROSHIN GEORGE 18. Aesthetic Quest in Literature and the Role of the Non-conformists —GAURI SHANKAR JHA Contributors