Notes that George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" is frequently encountered in textbooks that ignore the existence of the original audience. Argues that textbook editors thereby misinform students by failing to show how writers recognize and write to particular audiences, and how writers' specific audiences determine many of the authors'…

Literature anthologies are part of the furniture of English departments. Like the putty or gunmetal-gray file cabinet that one might have gotten new or used, they are not a showpiece of academic decor, but it would be hard to imagine work spaces without them. Indeed, they are omnipresent, amassed on the shelves of campus bookstores, weighing down…