New editions of this book continue being published to have teachers require "the new edition" from students. This way the publisher and the compilers keep on plundering unashamedly the parents' pockets. Interestingly, to compile comes from the latin "compilare", which means to plunder. Compilation as it is, plus "obvious" literary theory, this book should cost no more than its weight in paper plus a few dollars. The obvious recommendation to the student is: when completed the course sell this "brick" before a new edition appears, and buy and read the full versions of the classics (Sophocles, Shakespeare, Lord Tennyson, Ibsen, Chekhov, Faulkner, Melville, Browning, J. Keats, Donne, Wordsworth, W. B. Yeats, ...); disregard all the remaining mediocre authors this book includes. Regarding Sophocles, Oedipux Rex, the translation the compilers have chosen is by Duddley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. Fitts was playwriter, and Fitzgerald, academic as he was and popularly known for his translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, was never a "translator" but a "paraphraser". Read the translations by Lattimore for a "taste" of the originals, instead. Regarding "obvious" literary theory" a few sentences choosen at random from the 9th edition will suffice: Drama "normally presents its action (a) through actors, (b) on stage, and (c) before and audience" (pp.1028).
"The sharpness and vividness of any image will ordinarily depend on how specific it is and on the poet's use of effective detail" (pp. 702).
"Talented authors achieve compression by exercising a careful selectivity" (pp. 274).

i originally got this book because I needed it for a class. In the end I used it for much longer. Its really good and I recommend it