A One-Volume Edition?

Many instructors have asked us if we plan to publish a "concise" one-volume edition of The Heath Anthology of American Literature for use in courses that cover the entire period of American literature in a single term. We would be happy to provide such a text, but we will need your help.

The Heath Anthology of American Literature was constructed in its current two-volume format to fit the configuration of the traditional two-term survey course that breaks roughly around the time of the Civil War. Since the text offers more writers and more apparatus than the existing anthologies, and gives greater space to the writers normally excluded from other two-volume texts, we have published a very large text indeed (almost 5700 total pages.) Most single-volume texts are actually what have been commonly referred to as "major author editions" of larger two-volume anthologies. The publishers of these texts assemble a single volume of roughly 2500 pages by eliminating minority and women writers or works generally considered to be "marginal."

Obviously, these "major author editions" are at odds with the informing philosophy of the Heath Anthology. We will be happy to provide a text to serve the needs of one-term course instructors. But we'll need your advice in identifying the authors and selections in our text that you consider expendable. If you would like a single volume text, please let us know. Equally important, please tell us which authors in the current two-volume table of contents we could eliminate from a one-volume edition of 3000 pages or less. Write to Paul Smith, Senior Editor, D. C. Heath and Company, 125 Spring Street, Lexington, MA 02173

Instructor's Resource Manual

The Instructor's Resource Manual for the Heath Anthology is now in production, and will be published this summer. If you need to have it sooner, either for examination purposes or to help prepare for a course for which you have already adopted the anthology, contact the College Marketing Department at Heath. We will send you uncorrected pages for any section you require. The same contributing editors who wrote the extensive headnotes for each author in the anthology are also providing the instructor's material for that author. We asked them to provide information in the following categories: classroom issues and strategies; major themes, historical perspectives and personal issues; significant forms, styles, or artistic conventions; original audience; comparisons, contrasts, connections; questions for reading and discussion/approaches to writing. We estimate that the finished Instructor's Resource Manual will run about 700 pages! There is nothing else on the market that will match it in scope or quality of scholarship.

Whitman and Dickinson

Supplement for Volume 2

Due to the sheer inclusiveness of our anthology, we did not have room to repeat the selections from Whitman and Dickinson in Volume 2 (as some other anthologies do.) However, if you teach the second half of the survey and include Whitman and/or Dickinson in your syllabus, you can order Volume 2 shrinkwrapped with a supplement that includes all of the Whitman and Dickinson from Volume 1. There will be a slight additional charge to cover the cost of permissions and printing; your Heath representative or the College Marketing Department can supply details about ordering.

Columbia Literary History

Don't forget that D. C. Heath will provide one complimentary copy of the Columbia Literary History of the United States to any department where the Heath Anthology has been adopted. Contact your Heath representative or the College Marketing department for details.