As the second half of the British Literature survey, this course covers the literary scene in England between the 1780s and the present--a period, needless to say, of great global change and turmoil in every area of human activity, during which England reached the height of its power as a nation and then saw its massive empire dissolve almost completely. During the semester we will touch on the work of a range of familiar figures including Austen, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Dickens, Tennyson, the Brownings, the Rossettis, Kipling, Hardy, Eliot, Woolf, and Orwell, while also reflecting on the ways that these writers and others attempted to shape the world around them even as the world shaped them. Assigned work will consist of three unit tests and a maximum of three short papers. Our main textbook will be The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Concise Edition, Vol. B, 3rd ed. We will also read two nineteenth-century novels, most likely Jane Austen's Persuasion and Charles Dickens's Hard Times.