''The Bedford Reader'' is a college composition textbook published by the Bedford/St. Martin's publishing company. It is edited by X. J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Jane E. Aaron. It is widely used in freshman composition courses at colleges across the United States. The eleventh edition of the book is composed of over seventy essays, one short story, and one poem. It is divided into eleven sections by the various methods of development:

narration Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the ...

, description, example, comparison and contrast, analysis,

process analysis Process analysis is a form of technical writing and expository writing The rhetorical modes (also known as modes of discourse) are a long-standing attempt to broadly classify the major kinds of language-based communication, particularly writing a ...

, classification, cause and effect, definition, argument and persuasion, along with a section on mixing the methods.

Famous works and authors

Numerous essays and stories by noted authors are included in ''The Bedford Reader''. These include: * An excerpt from Maya Angelou's ''

I Know why the Caged Bird Sings ''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of charact ...

'' * "

The Lottery ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

" by

Shirley Jackson Shirley Hardie Jackson (December 14, 1916 – August 8, 1965) was an American writer known primarily for her works of horror and mystery. Over the duration of her writing career, which spanned over two decades, she composed six novels, two me ...

* "Shooting Dad", the essay that made

Sarah Vowell Sarah Jane Vowell (born December 27, 1969) is an American author, journalist, essayist, social commentator and voice actress. She has written seven nonfiction books on American history and culture. She was a contributing editor for the radio pro ...

famous * An essay by Dave Barry * "Remembering my Childhood on the Continent of Africa", from

David Sedaris David Raymond Sedaris (; born December 26, 1956) is an American humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. He was publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay " Santaland Diaries.” He published his first c ...

' ''

Me Talk Pretty One Day ''Me Talk Pretty One Day'', published in 2000, is a bestselling collection of essays by American humorist David Sedaris. The book is separated into two parts. The first part consists of essays about Sedaris’s life before his move to Normandy, Fr ...

'' * Jessica Mitford's "Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain" *

David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel '' Infinite Jest'', whi ...

's commencement speech for Kenyon College, "This Is Water" * An excerpt from

Michael Pollan Michael Kevin Pollan (; born February 6, 1955) is an American author and journalist, who is currently Professor of the Practice Non-Fiction and the first Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer at Harvard University. Concurrently, he is the Knight Professo ...

's ''The Omnivore's Dilemma'' * Judy Brady's "I Want a Wife" * Gloria Naylor's "The Meanings of a Word" *

Richard Rodriguez Richard Rodriguez (born July 31, 1944) is an American writer who became famous as the author of '' Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez'' (1982), a narrative about his intellectual development. Early life He was born on July 3 ...

's "Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood" * An excerpt from Barbara Kingsolver's ''Animal, Vegetable, Miracle'' * John Updike's "Extreme Dinosaurs" *

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

's I Have a Dream speech *

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''Whit ...

's "Clashing Civilizations?" (Said's response to Samuel P. Huntington's " The Clash of Civilizations") * George Orwell's "

Shooting an Elephant "Shooting an Elephant" is an essay by British writer George Orwell, first published in the literary magazine '' New Writing'' in late 1936 and broadcast by the BBC Home Service on 12 October 1948. The essay describes the experience of the Englis ...

" *

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet, and Anglican cleric who became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dubl ...

's "

A Modest Proposal ''A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick'', commonly referred to as ''A Modest Proposal'', is a Juvenalian satirical essay wr ...

" * Suzanne Britt's "Neat People vs. Sloppy People" * Brent Staples's "Black Men and Public Space" * "Dance of the Hobs". by

William Least Heat-Moon William Least Heat-Moon (born William Lewis Trogdon August 27, 1939) is an American travel writer and historian of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry. He is the author of several books which chronicle unusual journeys through the United States ...

The text quickly became a standard in college composition courses across the country. Because of the diversity of works and authors, ''The Bedford Reader'' has become popular among Advanced Placement English teachers, specifically those teaching to the

AP English Language and Composition Advanced Placement (AP) English Language and Composition (also known as AP English Language, APENG, or AP Lang) is a course and examination offered by the College Board as part of the Advanced Placement Program. When AP exams were first impleme ...

test.

External links

Book description at Bedford-St. Martin's site
Textbooks {{edu-book-stub