When Edgar Roberts taught literature and composition he dedicated a substantial amount of his class time explaining to students how they should prepare their writing assignments. The more time he spent describing the assignment, the better the final essays. However, these explicit essay-writing directions were taking up too much of his classroom time. At that point, Professor Roberts started to write and hand out directions, thus saving him valuable classroom time. Over the years, he tried and tested each assignment in his own classes. In addition to writing coverage, Professor Roberts recognized that literature classrooms needed both writing about literature instruction and an anthology to meet the needs of the literature and composition course. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, Ninth Edition is founded on the principles of writing about literature. It is not an afterthought and it is not treated as a separate chapter or appendix; it is the carefully integrated philosophy of Professor Roberts' approach to teaching literature and composition. --Publisher description.