Oxford Concise Companion to English Literature

Writers, published works, genres, movements in the literary world. They are all here in an alphabetic listing. For important writers of any age, be they novelists, dramatists, or poets, you will find an entry giving a brief biography and summarising their major works. Under the entry for Charles Dickens, for example, you will find a biography and a summary of his career in which his works are set in context. Then you will find separate, cross-referenced, entries for each of his works from Pickwick Papers to the unfinished Edwin Drood.

Then there are the genre entries – entries exploring the development and influence of such genres as science fiction (with separate entries for science fiction drama and science fiction poetry) and horror (which follows the path from Beowulf to Hannibal Lector) – every important genre is there.

Also there are entries for literary magazines, literary terms (have you ever come across an epic simile?) and all other things literary – no wonder there are more than 5,000 entries.