The new two-volume "Norton Anthology of Drama" has been co-authored by Cornell professor of theater J. Ellen Gainor. With 65 plays ranging from ancient Greek drama to works by leading contemporary playwrights, the work is the first major drama anthology in Norton's prestigious literary series.

"Coming from theater and literature departments, we tried to add our knowledge of these overlapping disciplines by creating a comprehensive anthology of dramatic literature," write Gainor and her collaborators -- Stanton Garner Jr. of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Martin Puchner of Columbia University -- in the anthology's preface. "Experiencing live dramatic performances and reading plays on the printed page both bring a richness of experience that has always been a vital part of cultures and societies throughout the world."

Each volume has a 50-page critical introduction intended for students of drama and the general reader, annotated play texts, informative head notes introducing each play and illustrations.

"One of our biggest constraints was volume length," Gainor said. "There were so many plays from around the world and throughout theater history that we wanted to include, but, ultimately, we could only publish 65 selections to represent these rich and varied dramatic traditions."

The three co-authors collaborated on the introductory text and worked with a small group of contributors (including Cornell emeritus professor of Asian studies Karen Brazell) who assisted with some selections. "Each of the authors individually had primary responsibility for about one-third of the plays," Gainor said.

Her selections included the classical drama "Lysistrata," Molière's "Tartuffe," George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," Athol Fugard's "'Master Harold' ... and the boys," Sam Shepard's "Buried Child," the Restoration comedies "The Country Wife" and "The Rover," and eleven other plays.

Historical periods and artistic movements covered include Roman drama and classical Indian, Chinese and Japanese drama, and 20th-century Arabic drama. Three 20th-century masterpieces -- Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" -- are all included in a major drama anthology for the first time. Norton also commissioned new, performable translations of five plays, including "Tartuffe," translated by Constance Congdon, and Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi" ("Ubu the King"), translated by David Ball.

Part of the challenge the co-authors faced in assembling a comprehensive anthology, Gainor said, "was balancing our desire to introduce our readers to fascinating, exciting plays that are less well-known with our responsibility to include those important and influential works that have been central to theater and drama history."

Gainor is associate dean of the Graduate School at Cornell and serves on the graduate field faculty for the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance. She has taught classes in British and American drama at the graduate and undergraduate levels, including a new course on the American musical offered in fall 2008. Her research specialties include 20th-century British and American drama, feminist theater criticism and women playwrights.

She is the author of two books, "Shaw's Daughters: Dramatic and Narrative Constructions of Gender" and "Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture and Politics, 1915-48"; she edited the critical volume "Imperialism and Theatre" and co-edited "Performing America: Cultural Nationalism in American Theatre."

Norton's anthologies of British, American and world literature have been classroom staples for decades. Cornell's tradition of editorship for Norton began with emeritus professor of English M.H. Abrams, who conceived the first "Norton Anthology of English Literature" in 1962 and has edited it through seven editions. Norton's other notable Cornell contributors include professor of comparative literature Walter Cohen, who co-edited "The Norton Shakespeare" (2001 and 2008); and professor of psychology Thomas Gilovich, co-author of the 2005 textbook "Social Psychology."