When I took a graduate level course on turn-of-the-century English literature, I was an undergrad pursuing a professional writing minor who took the last English night course needed to graduate. This book was my godsend. Truth told, I enjoy literature in translation more than I tend to enjoy literature from the Isles, but this is an excellent reference work even for literature in the broader sense. If you need to understand an allusion, a literary movement, or a style of criticism this book will aid you. Just enough detail is provided, and cross-references put each entry into context well.

Based on the fifth edition of "The Oxford Companion to English Literature", this is a reference book for the student or general reader. It focuses on the English literature of the British Isles but there is still coverage of the literature of other countries and of other disciplines which have influenced or have been influenced by literature. More than 5000 entries illuminate the plots of novel and plays; songs and poems; the lives and works of authors, poets, playwrights, essayists, philosophers, and historicans; fictional characters; literary movements; legends; theatres; periodicals. Entries have been updated and there are several new essays on topics such as anachronism, autobiography, foreign influences on English literature, parody and Senecan tragedy.

This indispensable volume offers over 5,000 alphabetically arranged entries on individual novels, plays, songs, poems, novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, philosophers, historians, fictional characters, literary movements, legends, and much more. This newly revised abridgement also features useful plot summaries and countless biographical articles on authors.

Based on the vastly popular Fifth Edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature edited by Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer, this indispensable volume offers over five thousand alphabetically arranged entries on individual novels, plays, songs, poems, novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, philosophers, historians, fictional characters, literary movements, legends, and much more.

Like its parent volume, this abridgement features useful plot summaries, separate entries on important fictional characters, and countless biographical articles on authors and other influential figures in the world of letters, all presented with the same lightness of touch that has made the original work such a pleasure to read. Fully revised and updated with sixty new entries on contemporary writers including Peter Ackroyd, Martin Amis, W. Robertson Davies, P.D. James, Toni Morison, and Jeanette Winterson, this edition also includes new appendices listing the winners of the Nobel, Booker, and Pulitzer prizes. It covers topics once regarded as non-literary--detective stories, science fiction, children's stories, and comic strips among them--as well as important movements and critical theories, including the latest developments in Freudian and Marxist criticism.

With generous coverage of literature from around the world, entries on literary movements, critics, and critical theories, updated information on modern authors and works, and several entirely new essays on a number of topics ranging from parody to heroic drama to foreign influences on English literature, this is a book that readers will find indispensable.