How useful is this as a sampler of the canon?

It is great, and much more interesting than the american one. The lack of realism and the actual amount of fun picaresque/excellent poetic texts in pre 19th century english writing is surprising. I highly recommend it.

>>8020264
Dis

I was required to take early Britlit and late Britlit and the only textbook was all five volumes of this. Learned about loads of authors i knew nothing about

The edition i bought ten years ago came with a cd with recordings of some old english poetry, that was pretty cool.

>>8020165
It's awesome, well worth it. Great analysis and random factoids.

I used that in uni. Sure, the stuff's in there.