Oxford Companion

The new edition of the Oxford Companion to English Literature , edited by novelist Margaret Drabble, is a superb, entirely updated reference work. The range is astonishing: As one would expect, it includes biographical entries for British poets and novelists from the earliest times to yesterday, but also reviews the work of philosophers, historians, journalists, scientists, scholars, artists and others who influenced British literature. And the biographical entries are not limited to Britain – there’s one on Pynchon, another on Gunther Grass, one on Goethe, one on Rousseau, one on Dante, one on Descartes, etc etc. There are also entries that summarize major works in English literature, identify important characters from novels, define literary-critical terms. Periodically, there are longer essays on particular genres (children’s lit, science fiction) or movements (romanticism, structuralism). The entries are informative and clear, and some are more entertaining that one expects from a standard reference work.