Freshman composition instructors will not find a more affordable basic textbook for their cash-strapped students. This book and its partner edition, Reading and Writing in Freshman English II, focus on total literacy, with emphasis given to reading comprehension of increasingly challenging texts. Volume One includes short stories by Poe, Guy de Maupassant, Jack London, Katherine Mansfield, Chekhov, Ambrose Bierce, Kate Chopin, and Willa Cather; poetry by Dickinson, Housman, Sassoon, Owen, Yeats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Frost; and sections on writing personal narratives, brainstorming activities, what is not appropriate in undergraduate papers, suggestions for effective peer editing, logical fallacies, samples of MLA citations, a works cited exercise, a sample MLA-style paper, and fourteen rubrics and checklists.