1. What is Literature? 1
2. Fabulous Beginnings: Myth 7
3. Writing for Nations: Epic 13
4. Being Human: Tragedy 20
5. English Tales: Chaucer 26
6. Theatre on the Street: The Mystery Plays 33
7. The Bard: Shakespeare 40
8. The Book of Books: The King James Bible 47
9. Minds Unchained: The Metaphysicals 54
10. Nations Rise: Milton and Spenser 61
11. Who 'Owns' Literature?: Printing, Publishing and Copyright 68
12. The House of Fiction 75
13. Travellers' Tall Tales: Defoe, Swift and the Rise of the Novel 82
14. How to Read: Dr Johnson 88
15. Romantic Revolutionaries 94
16. The Sharpest Mind: Austen 101
17. Books for You: The Changing Reading Public 108
18. The Giant: Dickens 114
19. Life in Literature: The Brontës 121
20. Under the Blankets: Literature and Children 128
21. Flowers of Decadence: Wilde, Baudelaire, Proust and Whitman 134
22. Poets Laureate: Tennyson 141
23. New Lands: America and the American Voice 147
24. The Great Pessimist: Hardy 154
25. Dangerous Books: Literature and the Censor 161
26. Empire: Kipling, Conrad and Forster 168
27. Doomed Anthems: The War Poets 175
28. The Year that Changed Everything: 1922 and the Modernists 182
29. A Literature of Her Own: Woolf 188
30. Brave New Worlds: Utopias and Dystopias 195
31. Boxes of Tricks: Complex Narratives 202
32. Off the Page: Literature on Film, TV and the Stage 208
33. Absurd Existences: Kafka, Camus, Beckett and Pinter 214
34. The Poetry of Breakdown: Lowell, Plath, Larkin and Hughes 221
35. Colourful Cultures: Literature and Race 228
36. Magical Realisms: Borges, Grass, Rushdie and Márquez 235
37. Republic of Letters: Literature Without Borders 241
38. Guilty Pleasures: Bestsellers and Potboilers 248
39. Who's Best?: Prizes, Festivals and Reading Groups 254
40. Literature in Your Lifetime…and Beyond 260
Index 267