Encyclopedias, Dictionaries...: Literature

Contains biographical and critical essays on the work of important American writers.

Focuses on writers and works published since 1950. The majority of the authors surveyed are African American, but representative African and Caribbean authors are also included.

A collection of critical essays covering writers who have made significant contributions to British, Irish, and Commonwealth literature from the 14th century to the present day.

This comprehensive guide spans sixteen centuries of the literature and literary culture of Ireland. There is a wealth of information on writers and their works, movements, genres, topics, folklore, and historical, religious, and cultural events.

In-depth profiles of major authors

An examination of the development and writers of short fiction from its beginning to the present.

Covers 245 characters published in popular works of fiction from 2000 to 2013

This work examines more than 29,000 major characters from 3,500 important works of literature.

Analyzes the use of place in over 1,300 literary works.

This ready reference examines Shakespeare's plots, language, and themes; his use of sources and exploration of issues important to his age; the interpretation of his works through productions from the Renaissance to the present; and the critical reaction to key questions concerning his writings.

This Companion examines the broad sweep of fiction-writing in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century, from 1900 to the outbreak of the First World War.

Includes more than 2,500 individual beings and species of fairy and nature spirits from a wide range of mythologies and religions from all over the globe.

The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain comprises over 600 authoritative entries spanning key figures, contexts and influences in the literatures of Britain from the fifth to the sixteenth centuries.

A comprehensive work containg articles on rhetoric from an historical, philosphical and literary perspectives. Includes topics on public speaking and performance.

Covers writers who have made significant contributions to European literature. Includes in-depth critical and biographical analysis.

This six-volume set explores the history of women and feminism throughout literature, from classical antiquity to modern times.

Covers American authors from many periods and genres, building a broad understanding of the various contexts - from the biographical to the literary to the historical - in which literature can be viewed.

Covers world authors from many periods and genres, building an understanding of the various contexts -- from the biographical to the literary to the historical -- in which literature can be viewed.

Database including author biographies and literary criticism

Spans all facets of gothic literature, including visual and performing arts, society and culture, themes, and settings. Includes primary source documents and critical material to provide a contextual perspective.

Provides entries on themes and motifs, individuals, characters and character types, national traditions, and genres of folk and fairy tales from around the world.

The Encyclopedia encompasses the full range of topics in linguistics, including such areas as historical, comparative, formal, mathematical, functional, philosophical, and sociolinguistics. Special attention is given to interrelations within these branches of the field and to relations of linguistics with other disciplines.

Entries provide in-depth historical background information on each movement as well as modern critical interpretation of each movement's characteristic styles and themes.

Introduces students to the history and scope of literary theory, showing them how to perform literary analysis, and providing a greater understanding of the historical contexts for different theories.

The Literature of Propaganda examines how literary works have been used as propaganda to shape public opinion, persuades audiences, and impact society.

Provides historical, cultural and social context of works that focus on armed conflict throughout the world and time. It highlights the realities of war, its impact on society, and how it affects our understanding of it.

This Companion presents an authoritative guide to ten centuries of literature produced in the territory now called France, and to the rich literary output of other French‐speaking countries around the world.

The Oxford Companion to American Literature is a guide to America's literary culture, providing one of the finest resources to this country's rich history of great writers.

The Oxford Companion to Chaucer provides a wealth of clear, up-to-date assessments on all aspects of Chaucer. Entries provide information on Chaucer's life and times, his works and the characteristics of them, his language and metre, his reading and the creative uses he made of it, and his major moral and literary themes.

The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature provides an indispensable and fascinating reference guide to the world of children's literature. Its 3,500 entries cover every genre from fairy tales to chapbooks; school stories to science fiction; comics to children's hymns

The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature is the complete and authoritative reference guide to the classical world and its literary heritage.

The Oxford Companion to English Literature has long been established as the leading reference resource for students, teachers, scholars, and general readers of English literature. It provides unrivalled coverage of all aspects of English literature ― from writers, their works, and the historical and cultural context in which they wrote, to critics, literary theory, and allusions.

Over 1,000 entries. This Companion is an authoritative reference source for the complex and captivating genre of the fairy tale.

Designed to be a reliable source of information on the whole sweep of literature from German‐speaking countries from the eighth century onwards, the Companion now comes right up to the mid–1990s, including recent works such as Günter Grass's controversial novel about the unification of East and West Germany, Ein weites Feld

The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature takes a broad view of what constitutes literature, covering historical writing, travel writing, theatre, and philosophy as well as the novel, poetry, literary dialogues, and critical theory.

An extensive guide to the lives of influential poets writing in English, in Britain and around the world, illuminating the influences, inspirations, and movements that have shaped the lives and works of our best-loved poets.

The Oxford Companion to the Brontes provides comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date information on the lives, works, and afterlives of the three Bronte sisters.

This Companion examines English-language writers and writing throughout the twentieth century, in all major genres and from all around the world.

This Companion provides a comprehensive survey of women writers across four centuries of American history.

Covering all aspects of mythology, this Companion includes essays on the world's major mythological traditions (Greek, Native American, Indian, Japanese, Sumerian, Egyptian).

This collection offers a stimulating picture of American culture and life. Up-to-date and thoroughly researched, the Dictionary gives readers a nutshell history of what great (and not-so-great) Americans had to say about many topics.

350 essays from leading scholars, encompassing the range and depth of American literary history from the 1600s to the present day.

The Encyclopedia provides comprehensive coverage of literature from the Abbey Theatre to Israel Zangwill, covering the entire history of literature in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

Documents and interprets the books read by children throughout the world. Offers a global perspective that pays attention to significant international trends and the multicultural expansion of the field.

This classic reference work is a gazetteer of almost 2,000 places - villages, towns, cities, and landscapes - in Britain and Ireland detailing their connections with the lives of famous writers. It invites the reader to explore the places where their favourite writers - from Jane Austen to Philip Pullman - were born, lived, were educated, worked, and drew inspiration.

This Guide highlights the place of translation in our culture, encouraging awareness of the process of translating and making the translator more visible.

Over 400 entries cover Conrad’s life, people, places, novels, stories, essays and reviews, influences and sources, characters, reputation and historical context.

The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Dickens draws together an unparalleled diversity of information on one of our greatest writers: his life, his works, his reputation, and his cultural context.

Under the editorial guidance of John Rignall, over 50 literary scholars from a variety of backgrounds offer here the latest thinking and expertise on George Eliot, providing a rich diversity of information and critical insight into her fiction and its contexts, invaluable for both students and general readers.

Norman Page, with the help of his team of expert contributors, presents here in one volume a unique synthesis of understanding and insight into the life and works of Thomas Hardy

Critical Insights and Critical Surveys

This dictionary explores the language of domestic life found in Shakespeare's work and seeks to demonstrate the meanings he attaches to it through his uses of it in particular contexts.

This work provides thorough coverage of the literature of the supernatural across the canon, covering such works as Shakespeare's Hamlet, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Offers over 50 primary documents that illuminate the character, personalities, and events of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.