The English Reader:
What Every Literate Person Needs to Know. Michael Ravitch and Diane
Ravitch. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 512. $30.00, hardcover.
ISBN: 0-19-507729-6. TEL: 800-451-7556
I should confess, first of all, that I’m a little put off by book titles
that claim to contain what every literate, or educated, or well-informed person
should know. It is the presumptuous, authoritative tone that bothers me.
Having said that, I think this anthology has a place. It is the Whitman’s
Sampler of English literature: 500 pages of short examples of 400 years’
worth of English prose and poetry. The book is bookended by Queen Elizabeth
I’s speech to her army on the eve of the battle of the Spanish Armada
and Churchilll’s famous “This was their finest hour” speech
to the House of Commons on June 18, 1940.
In between these two speeches, we find a quick overview of English literature
created by including brief selections from Britain’s most celebrated
writers. No one is examined at length here: six pages on John Donne, two pages
for Robert Herrick, ten pages from the King James Bible, seven pages for John
Keats, and four for Dylan Thomas.
We also find Shakespeare, of course, represented by nine sonnets and famous
speeches from eight plays. This is English literature lite: not a book intended
for scholars, but one that will give readers a passing acquaintance with some
of England’s most famous writers.
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