Literature in its Place is an intriguing title. While first glance suggests that the author has found a place for literature, or even that he has somehow put it in its place, the reader finds that he really has spent a lifetime making a place for it at the center of his life and is now inviting us to go and do likewise. For James Britton, literature's place in not what curriculum guides or canon-lovers limit it to, but rather what the fruitful imaginations of all language users, young or old, use it for to tell their stories to themselves or others.

In a sense, the book is the authors's gift to himself, a memoir that distills a long and rich life of reading, writing , and professing literature, and extended story of what that lifetime has told him about encouragement and stimulation.

It's also a gift to the thousands of English teachers throughout the English-speaking world who have themselves been nurtured for the last half century by James Britton's insight into language and learning. He has been the profession's confessor and conscience and it definer of literature's central place in life, both in school and out.