Living Literatures is an anthology of the shorter readings prescribed for the second and third year of the Discipline course in English at Delhi University. The poems in the first part, by Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Swift, Blake, Hardy, Eliot and others, illustrate major periods in English literature and several different poetic forms. The questions encourage close critical reading and comparisons between poems. The second part introduces students to post-colonial literature, with poems and short stories by writers like Neruda, Marquez, Mahashweta Devi and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Themes of national identity, the effect of colonial rule on a country’s language and culture, the resistance to capitalist of patriarchal oppression and the use of new narrative techniques such as magic realism are all represented in this selection.