The Oxford Companion to English Literature

Book Description

Based on the text of Margaret Drabble's 1995 edition, this sixth edition has been completely reworked and expanded. There are nearly 600 entirely new entries to reflect the new figures and issues of English Literature in the new millennium, and the existing entries have been extensively revised and updated to incorporate the latest scholarship. But this new edition remains faithful to Sir Paul Harvey's original vision of an authoritative work placing English literature from the Classical world, Europe, Latin America, and beyond. In addition to the extensive coverage of writers, works, literary theory, allusions, and characters, there are sixteen featured essay-style entries on key topics including black British literature, fantasy fiction, and modernism.

Customer Reviews:

A handy if heavy friend!.......2005-02-17

A wonderful resource and superbly edited by Ms Drabble to not only meet the founding principles of this work (which first appeared in the 1930's) but also to consider the ever changing parimeters of what good and great literature is, a highly subjective notion at best.
The title almost does not do this work justice, it bestows it with a crusty old British acaedemic image. You almost imagine having to blow the dust off it before you can begin! But it is so much more rich and diverse than this and should not be avoided by those made nervous by it's title; it is not the untouchable work it sounds like it may be.
If literature is a love of yours, whether by author or genre, then you will find this brilliantly informative. Don't be put off by this being such an enormous book, it needs to be, it will become a dear and chubby friend in no time!

A worthy companion.......2003-07-11

The first 'Oxford Companion to English Literature' was published in 1932 under the editorial direction of Sir Paul Harvey (no relation the American radio commentator). Half a century and five editions later, this is still a standard, authoritative reference work necessary for scholars and interested non-experts alike.

Under the editorship of Margaret Drabble, author and biographer (known for 'The Witch of Exmoor' and the more recently published 'The Peppered Moth'), this volume remains faithful to Harvey's intention of placing English literature in its widest possible context while exploring the deep classical and continental connections that underpin much of the history.

How can literature be divorced from cultural context? Surely it cannot be -- hence the newest entries into the edition include topics that read as if they were taken from today's best-seller shelf:

- Anglo-Indian Literature
- Simon Armitage
- Kate Atkinson
- Louis de Bernieres
- Censorship

- Ben Elton
- Gay and lesbian literature
- Hypertext
- A. L. Kennedy
- Lad's literature
- Literature of science
- New Criticism
- New Irish Playwrights
- Carol Shields
- Travel writing

This sample listing of the latest entries is representative of the more established categories, in that the entries (encyclopedic in character) include Authors, Subjects, Titles, Events, Characters and Critical Theory. The entries are unsigned (an ever-controversial practice in reference works such as this) -- well over a hundred contributors assisted in this volume, including the likes of Matthew Sweet, Salman Rushdie, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Katherine Duncan-Jones, and Brian Vickers.

This volume serves the general reader well in that one may follow cross-reference trails through the text. Take, for instance, Aaron the Moor -- the reader will be directed to Titus Andronicus, to which one is directed to Shakespeare, and from there a host of other cross-references historical and modern. Under the entry of Gabriel Josipovici, one is led back the entries of Rabelais and Bellow, influences as well as objects of Josipovici's study.

The appendices are new features of this edition. The first appendix is a Chronology that lists the chronology of the production of English literature from c.1000 to 1999 side by side with major historical events in Britain and beyond, and the significant events in the lives of literary figures. Appendix 2 lists the Poets Laureate in chronological order, from 1619 (when the office unofficially began) to the present -- surprisingly, there have only been 21 (19 official). Appendix 3 lists major literary award winners: Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Library Association Carnegie Medalists, and Booker-McConnell Prize for Fiction. Obviously not all of these are British authors, but it helps to place British literature in the wider world context of the twentieth century (as all of these prizes are twentieth-century creations).

In addition to the encyclopedic entries, there are major essays scattered through the text. These include the following topics:

- Biography
- Black British Literature
- Children's Literature
- Detective Fiction
- Fantasy Fiction
- Ghost Stories
- Gothic Fiction
- Historical Fiction
- Metre
- Modernism
- Post-Colonial Literature
- Romanticism
- Science Fiction
- Spy Fiction
- Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

These essays include history and current development of the genre or topic, as well as bibliographic information for further research, which (regrettably) the smaller encyclopedic entries rarely have.

This is a terrific, one-volume reference that should serve well anyone with a need for quick and ready reference material. It should find a welcome home on the shelf of any avid reader, fan of literature and modern fiction, history, religion, or any devoted Anglophile.

A (Very Historical) Companion to English Literature.......2003-01-22

Disliking an Oxford Press book makes me feel like a heretic. The majority of their Companion books are superb, remarkably concise yet thorough works of scholarship. The English Companion is an unfortunate and surprising exception.

The entry for 'New Criticism' is an efficient example of the book's shortcomings. For one thing, there's a laundry list of authors, dates, and books but very little is said of the IDEAS that characterize New Criticism. The entries are generally hamstringed by a focus on the sociopolitical and historical aspects of writers and works. The effort is laudable but inappropriate and uneconomical for a reference work. In its most extreme form, the historical emphasis goes into bizarre detail about an author's upbringing -- is it really necessary that we know where an author went to grade school and when? Entries love to entertain tales of writers' deaths and and of their insignificant travellings. I often felt as though I were reading minibiographies.

One will also notice, in the case of 'New Criticism', the absence of any mention of the 'organic'. This is ridiculous and indicative of the book's lack of attention to concepts as such. There is a non-cross-referenced mention of 'organic' under Coleridge, yet even there it is only mentioned as one of his ideas, not in terms of what the theory tried to say. I would compare it to someone's asking, 'What does X mean?' This book's reply: 'X was one of so-and-so's ideas'. Too often, the response ends there. Literary theory entries are usually on the thin side, though the deconstruction essay is solid. However, even in the longest lit theory essays there is more of an emphasis on people and movements -- far less on ideas.

Along with the lack of depth (or conceptual emphasis), there's little sense of the overall significance of ideas, works or characters (ironic given the attempts at a social-historical approach): Caliban is mentioned in the Tempest entry, and even gets his own paragraph elsewhere, but there's nothing about his character as it's been re-elaborated and re-invented by a long tradition of English writers (Auden, Browning, Joyce, and Wilde for starters). There's nothing about Caliban's portrayal in that tradition, nor mention of Caliban's mirror, etc. Under 'hubris' (which is found, in turn, under a terse account of 'the Poetics'), there's nothing about Icarus, nor is there anything about hubris as a specific theme in so many works.

Speaking of hubris, it's baffling to me that Drabble's entry is longer than either Hill's or Heaney's. The general editor would have been better off focusing more of her energy on other writers: that expansive babbling space could have been put to stronger use had a more thorough background been given on either of those poets, among others.

Readers seeking to understand why an author alludes in his work to a character or poet will be little helped by nebulous terms like 'icily poised' or 'sensuously textured', which are more suggestive of gastronomic, rather than literary, criticism. To my mind a reference's primary function should be to offer a quick source of the 'essentials' of a book or of a writer's ideas, an understanding of which would illuminate one's reading of the alluding work. While I appreciate that entries shy away from 'this or that' critiques or strict (canonical) interpretations, giving lists of facts does an injustice to the works themselves and to the way these works have been interpreted by others. (Believe it or not, people CAN come to their own conclusions even after being introduced to an opinion.)

The book's scope is appropriate to literature, as literature tends to allude to so many disparate disciplines. But if one were truly trying to give an encyclopedic account of literature, the book would have to be much bigger. In this case, specialization suffers. I would have preferred a much more focused account of 'literature' as such; I'd then supplement this with other references focused, for example, on English history. One gets the sense that too many entries end up attenuated in this book.

On the positive side the plot summaries are strong and more nuanced, though many entries are badly written (full of odd, obscuring, convoluted syntax). Again, good editorship would have recognized this.

The book primarily succeeds as an enervated survey. Nevertheless, readers will occasionally happen upon some interesting, well-summarized topics.

I'm going to check out the Cambridgean counterpart to the Oxford Companion, and I'm hoping it will give a more in-depth account of ideas and themes. The other Oxford Companions are, however, truly amazing works and deserve a close look.

very good refrence.......1999-09-08

An excellent resource of information about English works of art

very good refrence.......1999-09-08

An excellent resource of information about English works of art

The Oxford Companion to the English Language (Oxford Companion to English Literature)

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An enyclopedia of English
Everything you need to know about literary terminology
The Oxford Companion to the English Language
The perfect bathroom book for English-language junkies.

The Oxford Companion to the English Language (Oxford Companion to English Literature)

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 019214183X

Book Description

Language is the life blood of a culture, and to be interested in culture is in some sense to be interested in language, in the shapes and sounds of words, in the history of reading, writing, and speech, in the endless variety of dialects and slangs, in the incessant creativity of the human
mind as it reaches out to others. It is surprising then that until now there has been no major one-volume reference devoted to the most widely dispersed and influential language of our time: the English language.
A language-lover's dream, The Oxford Companion to the English Language is a thousand-page cornucopia covering virtually every aspect of the English language as well as language in general. The range of topics is remarkable, offering a goldmine of information on writing and speech (including
entries on grammar, literary terms, linguistics, rhetoric, and style) as well as on such wider issues as sexist language, bilingual education, child language acquisition, and the history of English. There are biographies of Shakespeare, Noah Webster, Noam Chomsky, James Joyce, and many others who
have influenced the shape or study of the language; extended articles on everything from psycholinguistics to sign language to tragedy; coverage of every nation in which a significant part of the population speaks English as well as virtually every regional dialect and pidgin (from Gullah and Scouse
to Cockney and Tok Pisin). In addition, the Companion provides bibliographies for the larger entries, generous cross-referencing, etymologies for headwords, a chronology of English from Roman times to 1990, and an index of people who appear in entries or bibliographies. And like all Oxford
Companions, this volume is packed with delightful surprises. We learn, for instance, that the first Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard later became President (John Quincy Adams); that "slogan" originally meant "war cry"; that the keyboard arrangement QWERTY became popular not because it was efficient
but the opposite (it slows down the fingers and keeps them from jamming the keys); that "mbenzi" is Swahili for "rich person" (i.e., one who owns a Mercedes Benz); and that in Scotland, "to dree yir ain weird" means "to follow your own star."
From Scrabble to Websters to TESOL to Gibraltar, the thirty-five hundred entries here offer more information on a wider variety of topics than any other reference on the English language. Featuring the work of nearly a hundred scholars from around the world, this unique volume is the ideal
shelf-mate to The Oxford Companion to English Literature. It will captivate everyone who loves language.

Customer Reviews:

An enyclopedia of English.......2001-03-28

People who love English already have a few books about advanced English usage, such as Fowler, and various style guides. I love Fowler; browsing its pages is a delight. The Oxford Companion (concise ed) is different. It's much more objective, and more encylopedic. There are entries on many important linguistic terms and concepts, excellent definitions of all the grammatical terms you'll come across (what does "dative" mean?), accurate surveys of areas like what is a dialect and what isn't, and the major threads of the academic debate are presented. Every letter of the alphabet is given its history. Curious about Scouse? About the impact of Samuel Johnson and his dictionary? What is the state of opinion about the Sapir-Whorfian Hypothesis? Estuary English? Regional dialects of North America? I can't believe I haven't had this book on my shelf since the moment it was published, and I'm busy making a list of people to give it to. This a breakthrough contribution to books about English.

Everything you need to know about literary terminology.......2000-09-22

This book is one of the better purchases I have ever made. Every time I need a detail about the English language, literary devices and terminology, or grammatical usage, this book always has a couple of paragraphs to explain what I need to know -- and usually a handful of cross references to related topics. All with the usual careful and thorough treatment you expect from Oxford. Every library should have a copy of this book.

The Oxford Companion to the English Language.......2000-01-08

There are many things I would like to know about the English Language, but too few of them are here. For example the history of English is disposed of in three pages. I should have liked to have seen 30 or so. To be sure there are other historical entries, though insufficient cross referencing. The chronology following the above entry is largely of English history rather than of language history. In place of these things are pages of information one could do without; trivia relating to broadcasting or editions of dictionaries. A topical index would have been nice. Every true philologist will nonetheless want this work.

The perfect bathroom book for English-language junkies........1996-12-17

"Companion" well describes this book. People who love English for its own sake can flip open any page and start reading, and soon find themselves cross-referencing through the whole volume (and learning a lot). Not as essential as a dictionary or style guide, but a way to broaden your understanding of this marvellous, terrifying language and its relatives. For true language junkies, this is not for the bookshelf, but for the bathroom, to read in bits at leisure.

The Oxford Companion to American Literature

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Very American...

The Oxford Companion to American Literature
James D. Hart , and Phillip Leininger
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0195065484

Book Description

For more than half a century, James D. Hart's The Oxford Companion to American Literature has been an unparalleled guide to America's literary culture, providing one of the finest resources to this country's rich history of great writers. Now this acclaimed work has been completely revised and updated to reflect current developments in the world of American letters. For the sixth edition, editors James D. Hart and Phillip Leininger have updated the Companion in light of what has happened in American literature since 1982. To this end, they have revised the entries on such established authors as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Joyce Carol Oates, and they have added more than 180 new entries on novelists (T. Coraghessan Boyle, Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdrich, Don De Lillo), poets (Rita Dove, Weldon Kees), playwrights (Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson), popular writers (Stephen King, Louis L'Amour), historians (James M. McPherson, David Herbert Donald, William Manchester), naturalists (Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey), and literary critics (Camille Paglia, Richard Ellmann). In addition, the Companion boasts more women's, African-American, and ethnic voices, with new entries on such luminaries as Charlotte Perkins Gilman, M.F.K. Fisher, William Least Heat-Moon, Ursula Le Guin, and Oscar Hijuelos, among many others. These additions represent only some of the revisions for the new edition. Of course, the basic qualities of the Companion that readers have grown to know and love over the years are as superb as ever. With over 5,000 total entries, The Oxford Companion to American Literature reflects a dynamic balance between past and contemporary literature, surveying virtually every aspect of our national literature, from the Pulitzer Prize to pulp fiction, and from Walt Whitman to William F. Buckley, Jr. There are over 2,000 biographical profiles of important American authors (with information regarding their styles, subjects, and major works) and influential foreign writers as well as other figures who have been important in the nation's social and cultural history. There are more than 1,100 full summaries of important American novels, stories, essays, poems (with verse form noted), plays, biographies and autobiographies, tracts, narratives, and histories. The new edition provides historical background and astute commentary on literary schools and movements, literary awards, magazines, newspapers, and a wide variety of other matters directly related to writing in America. Finally, the book is thoroughly cross-referenced and features an extensive and fully updated index of literary and social history. Ranging from Captain John Smith to John Updike, and from Anne Bradstreet to Anne Rice, the sixth edition of The Oxford Companion to American Literature is up to date, accurate, and comprehensive, a delight for both the casual browser and the serious student.

Customer Reviews:

Very American..........2004-06-04

Any book that has the words 'Oxford Companion to' as part of the title is entitled to a certain respect, for the title speaks of a certain level of quality that is hard to match. While there are better and worse Oxford Companions, the series as a whole is of very high quality, and the 'Oxford Companion to American Literature' is no exception. This book has a significant history of its own - the principle compiler, James Hart, began work on the first edition of this text in 1936; the first Oxford Companion to American Literature was published in 1941. It went through several revisions in Hart's lifetime; after he died in 1990, Phillip Leininger took over completion of this sixth edition, revising and expanding some of the entries.

In all, there are over 5000 entries, with 1100 of them being significant summaries of major literary works, figures, or other significant literary topics. Of these, 104 were added by Leininger after Hart's death, which shows the great amount owed to Hart. This sixth edition includes information up to 1993/94. At the back of the book is a chronological index of American literary history and American social history laid out side by side, from 1577 to 1994. This shows the overall growth of America as a nation as well as a nation of literary artists.

American literature is broadly defined for this text, and includes not only the typical literary arts of novelists, poets, and playwrights, but also autobiographers and biographers, historians, newspaper and magazine writers. The colonies of America often being founded by religious persons looking for freedom of expression, a source of the American spirit that has never dissipated, there are entries for many religious leaders in American history. While previous editions have included an entry on each of the Presidents, this edition is more selective, including the Founding Fathers and only those later Presidents who had a significant role either in eras of change or notable literary output of their own (U.S. Grant and his autobiography, for example). Entries for universities have largely been eliminated here, but much of the deleted information is duplicated in other entries.

Entries on poems discuss publication history, poetic structure, influences on the composition, and, if appropriate, narrative of the meaning - for example, there is a brief synopsis of the 'plot' of Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven'. Entries on novels are much more plot summaries, with little of this background information, save where the novel is truly unique in style. Literary schools and awards are also entered - awards often have listings, such as the listing of all Pulitzer Prize winners from 1917 of the various types of literature; American Nobel Prize winners are also listed.

This is not a companion to high-brow literature only - popular writers from Louis L'Amour to Anne Rice are included. One thing that is not included, perhaps because it stretches the idea of literary art a bit further than the Oxford Companion would have it, are comic strips, comic books and their characters. The book is not exclusively American in scope - some born Americans who left or moved citizenship (T.S. Eliot), and those born elsewhere who became American (Isaac Bashevis Singer) are included; movements and influences from abroad are included also. There are also entries for major Native American tribes and personalities of North America. This is very much a book of the United States - the term 'American' is used in this context, so Canadians are not a subject of this volume (not to worry - there is an Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature).

Book Description

The first edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature, edited by Sir Paul Harvey, was published in 1932, and quickly established itself as as the standard source of reference for scholars, students, and general readers alike. In 1985, under the editorship of Margaret Drabble, the text was thoroughly and sensitively revised to bring it up to date without losing its essential character, or the lightness of touch that made it such a pleasure to dip into. The sixth edition, published in 2000, was extensively revised, expanded, and updated. Almost 600 new entries covered new writers, genres, and issues, and existing entries were reworked to incorporate the latest scholarship. The text was written by a team of more than 140 contributors under Margaret Drabble's editorial direction, including Brian Aldiss, Lisa Appignanesi, Jonathan Coe, Penelope Fitzgerald, Roy Porter, and Salman Rushdie. In addition to the extensive coverage of writers, works, literary theory, allusions, and characters, there are sixteen featured entries on key topics including black British literature, fantasy fiction, and modernism. The Companion remains an unrivalled work that places English literature in its widest context: no other book offers such extensive exploration of the classical roots of English literature, and the European and non-European works and writers that have influenced its development. The sixth edition is now being reissued to ensure that it remains absolutely up to date: the invaluable appendices - the chronology, and lists of winners of major literary awards - have been updated, as have many of the entries. Informed by the latest scholarly thinking, and comprehensively cross-referenced to guide the reader to topics of related interest, the Companion retains its position as the best guide to English literature available.

Customer Reviews:

Oxford Companion to English Literature.......2006-11-03

This reference book provides a comprehensive guide to English literature. Authors, book titles and characters from novels are included and the coverage of literature and quality of entries are excellent and its layout very good, but not every author is included, particularly with regard to new authors (writing within the last 10 years or so) and authors of television plays, series etc. However there is no immediate rival to this book, but I cannot award it 5 stars as not every author is included and some omissions are peculiar (eg Patricia Wentworth, although a pseudonym for Dora Amy Elles, is not included).

Average customer rating:

A good elementary referece book
Weston Berg
Excellent !
Funny and informative, authoritative and playful
A beautiful and authoritative guide

The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0198117353

Book Description

The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare is the most comprehensive reference work yet produced about Shakespeare's works, times, life, and afterlives. From the conjectured identity of the Dark Lady of the Sonnets to the misprints in the First Folio, from Shakespeare's favourite figures of speech to the staging of Othello in South Africa, a team of internationally renowned scholars provides a lucid, stimulating, and authoritative guide to the plays, the poems, and their interpretation around the world over the last four centuries. Bringing its readers up to date not only with the latest in Shakespearian scholarship and controversy but with the plays' most recent incarnations on stage, on film, and in international popular culture, this is the perfect companion to Shakespeare's works, covering everything from Aaron and act divisions to Zeffirelli and Zuccaro, and from Shakespeare in schools to Shakespeare in Love.

Customer Reviews:

A good elementary referece book.......2006-02-20

I bought this based on the Amazon.com reviews. I haven't been as impressed as others. It's written for a high school or a very general audience. As a high school reference, it's probably very good. At anything beyond a basic level, however, the book falls short. For example, the entries for many of the minor historical characters are so brief as to merely mention the play in which they appear -- even though I know these characters have relevant familial ties, particularly to royal families. I'm not sorry I bought it; I was just expecting a bit more depth considering its cost. It's fun to browse through (lots of interesting facts to stumble upon, and many beautiful illustrations) but the bottom line is that this book rarely provides sufficient answers to my specific questions. It doesn't really qualify as a reference book beyond an elementary level. I doubt this is the best source of its kind. I plan to do what I should have done in the first place, go to a library and compare the available Shakespeare handbooks. I'm certainly not going throw this book away, but I'm going to have to look for one that better suits my needs.

Weston Berg.......2005-10-24

This book I recommend to anyone who is well knowen to shakespear or some one like me who is just getting started. I bought the book to help me understand more about shakespear and things are becoming a lot less greek to me. The Author has done a excellent job with the book very easy to use and understand. A great insight to the history of Shakespearian Art and the theater.

Excellent ! .......2005-08-30

A great service has been performed by the publication of this wonderful book. In case anyone is interested in the latest scholarship regarding the authorship question (which will greatly enhance your appreciation of Shakespeare), please visit these relatively new books: "Shakespeare by Another Name" by Mark Anderson; and "The Monument: "Shake-Speares Sonnets" by Hank Whittemore.

Funny and informative, authoritative and playful.......2002-04-17

Like Shakespeare, this book is as strong on comedy as it is on the serious stuff, and like Shakespeare it's very rarely dull. The American Library Association have awarded it a prize as one of the best reference books of the year, and you can see why -- it's very up to date, very handsome, very easy to use and has lots and lots of really unusual and enlightening pictures. It's particularly good on Shakespeare movies, and is really international -- lively North American scholars cover Shakespeare's presence in Canada and the US beautifully, and it's really bright and surprising about Russia and China and about everywhere else. It's a book that will help explain to high school students why Shakespeare matters and that actually shows how much fun can be had around the plays and poems in so many different ways -- quite apart from telling college students all sorts of things that their professors had better be up on too. I didn't agree with everything it said about the shows at the rebuilt Globe, sure, but then I like seeing guys in tights.

A beautiful and authoritative guide.......2001-12-03

This guide is beautifully illustrated and carefully written by many of the finest Shakespeare scholars alive (there are entries by Helen Vendler, Park Honan, Jonathan Bate, Stephen Orgel, and many others). It is a joy to simply open it to a random page and read. There is an admitted and fairly strong bias toward British Shakespearians and productions, but this helps focus the book and give it a depth many similar guides lack. That doesn't mean it's a provincial book, however, for there are numerous entries surveying Shakespeare across the world and in a variety of contexts. One of the most helpful aspects of the book is an outline of categories and entries at the beginning, a remarkably useful aid when terminology or names slip your mind. It is helpful, but not necessary, to have a copy of the Oxford Shakespeare to refer to, since titles, chronologies, and line references are all keyed to it.

Average customer rating:

An Indispensable Guide for the Trollope Addict
An Essential Guide to An Essential Author
An Essential Guide to An Essential Author

Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

'Scholarly, ambitious and scrupulous'. This is how the TLS recently described the Oxford Reader's Companion Series. In September 2000, the book which pioneered the series, The Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens, came out in paperback. Now the Oxford Reader's Companions to Trollope, Hardy, Conrad, and George Eliot will follow on from its success. In this format each of these books, designed specifically to appeal to students of literature, contains a more comprehensive and accessible range of information than any other reference work on these writers. 'The busiest man of letters'. Few writers before or since have covered so much territory or written so many books. His output was formidable. The Oxford Reader's Companion to Trollope encompasses all the latest scholarship on this fascinating writer in one single volume. Thirty-six contributors have come together to bring a wealth of biographical, bibliographical, and historical information to illuminate the wider literary and cultural context of Trollope's life and work. Over 500 A-Z entries cover Trollope's literature; his work as biographer, journalist and travel writer; subsequent criticism and praise of his work; his family members, friends, and acquaintances; the social context of his life; his influences and the things he influenced; his interests and ideas. Entries include: Works: 'England and America', 'Clarrisa', 'Modern Literature', 'Cicero as a Man of Letters', 'The Higher Education of Women', 'On The Eastern Question', 'The Civil Service as a Profession', 'Letters from South Africa' Novels: Barchester Towers, Can You Forgive Her?, Orley Farm, The Small House at Allington, The Way We Live Now Biography and auto-biography: An Autobiography, Lord Palmerston, Thackeray Plays: Did He Steal It?, The Noble Jilt Short stories: 'Christmas at Thompson Hall', 'Mrs Brumby', 'Not If I Know It' Unpublished works: 'History of World Literature', Commonplace Book Private life: holidays abroad, food and drink, portraits and photographs, smoking Public life: public service of Anthony Trollope, Trollope and the Civil Service Trollope the writer: comedy in Trollope's work, heroes and heroines, language and style, working habits Issues and social context: charity and philanthropy, education, government, suffrage, agnosticism, atheism, art and artists, dancing, fashion, marriage and divorce, monarchy, old age In addition to A-Z entries, the book offers additional material: a useful thematic overview of entries, a chronology of Trollope's life, family trees, a comprehensive bibliography for further reading and maps of Trollope's travels.

Customer Reviews:

An Indispensable Guide for the Trollope Addict.......2006-04-10

In his long writing career, Anthony Trollope wrote 47 novels, dozens of short stories, plus assorted nonfiction such as the journal of a voyage to Iceland and a book about the Spanish Main. If you like his work as much as I do, you need a vade mecum, or companion, to help remind you which character belongs to which book, with assorted explanations of the major themes and background in the Victorian era in which Trollope is so firmly situated.

R. C. Terry's encyclopedic reference is both well-informed and well-written, and certainly comprehensive. Its only competition is Richard Mullen's PENGUIN COMPANION TO TROLLOPE, which is not quite so useful. Terry's book has over 500 entries, including several aids to navigating its 600 pages. The entry for Griselda, Marchioness of Hartletop, for example, identifies the 8 Trollope novels in which she appears, at times as an important character. There is no equivalent entry in the Mullen book.

Like Balzac, Proust, and Faulkner, Trollope has characters that frequently span two or more novels. This is especially true in the two big "sextets," the Barchester and Palliser novels, though not limited to them.

Anthony Trollope's novels have been a source of great joy to me over the years. There are few reading experiences comparable to the frisson I get when opening a new Trollope novel for the first time. I would not be surprised that that thrill will recur when I start re-reading them, as I hope to do some day.

An Essential Guide to An Essential Author.......2000-10-06

This guide, at once learned and down to earth, provides a detailed look at one of the greatest writers of the 19th century, Anthony Trollope. Always a popular favorite, and only now being accorded the academic and critical attention he so richly deserves, this guide takes a reader through his many novels, travel pieces, criticism, translation and biography. Trollope was an indefatigable observer of middle- and upper-middle-class life at the height of the British Empire, during the mid-19th century. His unusually acute psychological observations -- still telling today -- and his keen eye and ear for social nuance and political intrigue are unparalleled in literature (George Eliot, a close friend, said she couldn't have embarked on "Middlemarch" without the groundwork Trollope laid in his Barsetshire novels). This volume includes thoughtful essays on all of the novels, with tidbits on critical reception at the time of their publication. It also describes aspects of Trollope's art -- his prose style, his sense of characterization, his plotting, his humor, his moral depth and his literary antecedents. For someone new to the author, it is a welcome introduction to his work; for those already in thrall to this supreme novelist's skill, it is an invaluable resource, a reminder of the breadth of Trollope's talent. It's a volume to be dipped into or savored at length. Filled with intelligence, insight and wit, this literary companion belongs on the shelf of any thoughtful reader's library.

An Essential Guide to An Essential Author.......2000-10-06

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An English Graduate Student in Nashville

The Concise Oxford Companion to African

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Cambridge Companion to the African American Novel (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
The Oxford Companion to American Literature
Teaching African American Literature: Theory and Practice (Transforming Teaching)
Reading Contemporary African American Drama: Fragments of History, Fragments of Self (African American Literature and Culture: Expanding and Exploding the Boundaries)
The Adrienne Kennedy Reader

ASIN: 019513883X

Amazon.com

This important sourcebook for information about black writers and their craft is a welcome companion to the recently issued Norton Anthology of African American Literature. More to the point, it shows how much black literature, once relegated to the margins, has become mainstream. Here are brief biographies of more than 400 black writers, entries on some 150 works, and a host of entries on characters from novels, stories, and plays. In addition, there are entries on topics such as Afrocentricity (as well as on topics of more general interest, such as the novel), that make this essential for anyone who cares about black literature.

Book Description

A breathtaking achievement, this Concise Companion is a suitable crown to the astonishing production in African American literature and criticism that has swept over American literary studies in the last two decades. It offers an enormous range of writers-from Sojourner Truth to Frederick Douglass, from Zora Neale Hurston to Ralph Ellison, and from Toni Morrison to August Wilson. It contains entries on major works (including synopses of novels), such as Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Richard Wright's Native Son, and Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun. It also incorporates information on literary characters such as Bigger Thomas, Coffin Ed Johnson, Kunta Kinte, Sula Peace, as well as on character types such as Aunt Jemima, Brer Rabbit, John Henry, Stackolee, and the trickster. Icons of black culture are addressed, including vivid details about the lives of Muhammad Ali, John Coltrane, Marcus Garvey, Jackie Robinson, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman. Here, too, are general articles on poetry, fiction, and drama; on autobiography, slave narratives, Sunday School literature, and oratory; as well as on a wide spectrum of related topics. Compact yet thorough, this handy volume gathers works from a vast array of sources--from the black periodical press to women's clubs--making it one of the most substantial guides available on the growing, exciting world of African American literature.

Customer Reviews:

OUTSTANDING RESOURCE.......2001-05-21

Everything that you wanted to know or needed to know about African American Literature is contained in this eight hundred page volume. This comprehensive volume covers the historical and cultural contexts of African American literature that has been too long neglected.

Oxford's Companion encompasses the traditional genres of poetry, fiction and drama but goes beyond them. It gives the same analysis to special genres such as Slave Narratives, Oratory, Folk Literature, etc. that you don't normally find in reference works of this kind. These special features and others give this book a unique spot in reference works of literature.

From the moment I got this volume in my hands, I couldn't put it down. Its numerous essays, brief biographies and analysis of the various hues of African American Literature was overwhelming and enjoyable. A referance guide such as this should be in every home. It is user friendly, informative and entertaining. Most of all it will give you a deeper appreciation of the vast types of African American literature produced throughout the years.

An English Graduate Student in Nashville.......2001-04-25

I purchased this anthology to assist me in my African-American literature class. This book has given me great insight about the literature of African-Americans. Not only does it give great details about the many authors, but it also explains the nature of their many works. I strongly recommend this book to anyone taking an African-American literature course - regardless of the time period.

Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction 1900-14: New Voices in the Age of Uncertainty

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Oxford Companion to Edwardian Fiction 1900-14: New Voices in the Age of Uncertainty

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

British | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

'This oozing, bulging wealth of the English upper and upper-middle classes.' This was how George Orwell saw the Edwardian period. What images do we see when we think of that era? Ladies munching delicately on cucumber sandwiches? Gentlemen in straw boaters punting gently down rivers? Looking at the authors and authoresses of this time and the things that they wrote about, it seems that there is more to that era than this chocolate-box image of long, lazy summer afternoons would imply. In fact the Edwardian period was a time of much anxiety and insecurity about the changes that were taking place and the ideas that were emerging, and the fiction which arose from them serves as evidence for this. In this unique guide, described as 'a tremendous achievement' by the TLS, literature scholars Sandra Kemp, Charlotte Mitchell, and David Trotter explore the broad sweep of writing that emerged from the early 20th century. Now available in paperback, the Companion offers a wealth of information on the writers, the works, the themes, and the ideas of this fascinating literary era. From Walter Besant's The Fourth Generation, to James Joyce's Dubliners, the Companion doesn't merely centre on works from the Edwardian period but also explores those whose fiction influenced writers at the start of the period and those who took those writers' themes and ideas up to the next level. It also provides details on some of the now neglected and forgotten gems that came from that era. Around 800 authors are covered and there are also entries on some of the most significant novels of the period. An unprecedented number of women began to publish at this time and they represent nearly half of the author-entries in the Companion. There are also entries on the themes and genres that emerged. This was a period when the urban middle and lower classes became not only the subject of fiction but also a substantial part of its readership. Never before had novels been so cheap to buy (and produce). Entries include: Writers: Alice and Claude Askew, J. M. Barrie, Max Beerbohm, M. McDonnell Bodkin, G. K. Chesterton, Walter de la Mare, Ethel M. Dell, A. Conan Doyle, John Galsworthy, Jerome K Jerome, Rudyard Kipling, Oliver Onions, Baroness Orczy, H. G. Wells Publications: The Albany Review, The Athenaeum, Contemporary Review, The Cornhill Magazine, The English Review, The New Age, Pall Mall Magazine Works: Anna of the Five Towns, The Country House, The Dark Flower, The Golden Bowl, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Lord Jim, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, The Railway Children, The Secret Garden, The White Peacock Themes: Boer War, crime fiction, exoticism, family sagas, fantasy, feminist fiction, historical romance, invasion scare stories, marriage problem novels, regional fiction, suburban life Other: literary agents, publishers In addition to the A-Z entries, there is a chronology charting major historical and cultural events, a list of books frequently consulted, and a very useful index of pseudonyms and changes of name.

The Oxford Companion to the Brontes (Oxford Companion To...)

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The lives and works of the Bronte sisters

The Oxford Companion to the Brontes (Oxford Companion To...)
Christine Alexander , and Margaret Smith
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Brontes (Authors in Context) (Oxford World's Classics)
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The Brontes: A Life in Letters

ASIN: 0198614322

Book Description

The Oxford Companion to the Brontes provides both comprehensive and detailed information about the lives, works, and reputations of the Brontes - the three sisters Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, and their father and brother Branwell - all of whom were published writers. It is the first time so much information about the family has been gathered together in an A-Z reference book. The story of the Brontes has become the stuff of myth: three women living on the wild Yorkshire moors, writing works of weird and wonderful genius. Charlotte Bronte claimed that her sister Emily's novel Wuthering Heights was 'hewn in a wild workshop'. Inspired by a deep love of nature and an intensely private imaginative world it certainly was, but Emily's novel, like those of her sisters, is engaged with 19th-century issues and debates. The Brontes lived in a thriving woollen-mill town and participated in local activities - the church, education, concerts, elections, exhibitions. They devoured the latest newspapers and journals, and kept abreast of politics. Their reading was wide and eclectic. A central purpose of the Companion is to evoke the milieu in which they lived and worked, revealing the complex interrelation between their lives, writings, and times. Long entries surveying the Brontes lives and works are supplemented by entries on friends and acquaintances, pets, literary and political heroes; on the places they knew and the places they imagined; on their letters, drawings and paintings; on historical events such as Chartism, the Peterloo Massacre and the Ashantee Wars; on exploration, slavery, and religion. Selected entries on the characters and places in the Bronte juvenilia provide a glimpse into their early imaginative worlds, and entries on film, ballet, and musicals indicate the extent to which their works have inspired others. This is a unique and authoritative reference book for the research student and the general reader - now available in paperback. The A-Z format, extensive cross-referencing, classified contents, chronologies, illustrations, and maps, both facilitate quick reference and encourage further exploration. Entries are also designed to explore scholarly trends and to reflect contemporary directions in literary study. They offer insight into publishing history, bibliographical studies, collectors and museums, book illustration, and theoretical and critical approaches to the Brontes' writings. This Companion is not only invaluable for quick searches, but a delight to browse, and an inspiration to further reading.

Customer Reviews:

The lives and works of the Bronte sisters.......2006-11-27

This book supplements other books about the lives, works and legacies of the Bronte sisters. It includes entries on sequels and adaptations of the works of Charlotte, Emily and Anne as well as coverage of their juvenilia.

The book itself is organised alphabetically, has indexes, cross-references and contains over 2000 entries.

Highly recommended for those of us who can never have too much information about the Sisters Bronte.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

The Oxford companion to English literature;

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The Oxford companion to English literature;
Paul Harvey
Manufacturer: Clarendon P
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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