A Little History of Literature

This book strongly resembles Saul Steinberg's famous New Yorker cover of New York City, but instead of New York streets writ large we have British authors with all the writers from other countries scattered haphazardly in the background.This necessarily gives a biased history of literature. Given these limitations this is a well-written, enlightening but very superficial literary history, aimed at the high schooler or college Freshman. It takes us only until the 5th chapter to get to Chaucer and we pretty much stay mainly on the British islands for the next 35. Sutherland, an expert in 19th Century British literature, pulls out interesting facts from all ages of writing and writes with a very light hand. But we get a full chapter on Hardy and Tennyson, but only a paragraph or two on Proust and Joyce and Kafka. He covers topics such as censorship, best sellers, screen adaptations and book prizes in their own chapters as well. A chapter on Virginia Woolf is typical: covered are a short bio, a survey of her works, feminist criticism and the Bloomsbury Group. All in seven pages. But this is a "little" history so there is truth in advertising and when moving at this pace, there are no longeurs. The book is continually entertaining, informative and very basic. It is like those tour buses that introduce you to a new city: showing you places that you may care to return to at some future time in order to linger.

Having read Sutherland's Lives of the Novelists, and listened to his marvelous lecture series on British Literature (via Audible) I knew I was in for a treat. And this new book did not disappoint, being (as it was) written in Professor Sutherland's distinctive style. I was never bored; rather, I was inspired to read MORE. I can genuinely recommend this book to anyone who needs a good reason to return to Literature. And for those who never left it, Sutherland will help you to get even more out of reading.

A very interesting and useful book. A good coverage of the subject in a not too heavy manner. Good basis for a reading programme.

No any Asian literature is mentioned in the book. It doesn’t include much about other culture literature, either.

He might as well have called it A Little History of Western Literature given his scant mention of any historical development in the eastern front save for the current writers Mo Yan from China who is a Nobel Laureate and Haruki Murakami from Japan who has a global following, both of which were only mentioned in passing. Substitute English for Western and the book becomes even more accurate, because after quick brushstrokes on the precursors of literature in the west, dedicating 4 out of 40 chapters on myths, epics and tragedies from various old world superpowers, he formally begins to follow the trail of literature in English beginning with Chaucer's Cantebury Tales. These gripes aside, this 'little history' will satisfy lovers of literature like me who are interested to follow the treasure trail of developments in the tools (printing and publishing), authorship (copyright laws), milieus (romanticism, modernism, post modernism, dystopian, absurdist, existentialist, metaphysical, magic realism, etc), types (novels, poetry, plays, criticism) and trends (reading groups, bestsellers, ebooks, adaptations, literary prizes, etc) that lead us to the book that we have in our hands. Easter eggs such as discovering that italics is so named because the first designer of the slanted type is from Italy, that font is so called because these are the receptacles of shapes where molten lead is poured to create the type, and that these fonts are stored in cases where the capital letters are found in the upper case, all add to the fun of reading this book. Many other tidbits such as these are inconspicuously found all over, and discovering them adds to the fun of reading. Knowing the tumultuous and multi-branched scope of literature's historical development in this book gave me greater appreciation of all the books I've read and will read, and for that alone I cherish this book and highly recommend its reading.

John Sutherland's books are always hugely enjoyable, with lots of informative tidbits scattered throughout. This is a little more programmatic than others of his I've read (his series on 19th Century novels -- Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? and their successors -- is not to be missed), but always thoughtful with interesting perspectives on his literary subjects.

Chock full of history behind much of the classic works of the West, and attempt to bring you up to date on current trends, such as the impact of eBooks on publishing and the paper trade. Unlike the horse drawn carriage and automobile analogy, in several ways I do not see eBooks replacing paper books, except in novels, and essays; also newspapers and some magazines. We book lovers will usually enjoy having the hard copy nearby, even for occasional display. This book had more typos than you would expect from a literature professor - was the editor having a bad day?

I read this little history of literature in three or four nights. The author is pleasant enough, and he covers a lot of material. Neither he nor the book is "deep." The book covers too much to be deep, but it is entertaining and non-threatening. It didn't rock my world, but it was pleasant enough as a reading experience.