Product Description

Substantially enlarged and updated for this new edition, The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English is the definitive guide to the vast and extraordinarily rich heritage of literature written in English. It covers all the major novelists, poets and dramatists - from Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens to Conrad and to contemporary writers from all over the English-speaking world - Saul Bellow, Adrienne Rich, Les Murray, Wole Soyinka, and Janet Frame. More than 100 specialist contributors provide detailed biographical and critical articles not only on writers and their works. Substantial coverage is also given to such literary genres as popular fiction, science fiction, detective novels, and children’s classics. All literary concepts and movements are described in detail. • Over 4,500 alphabetical entries, cross-referenced throughout • Includes all literature in English - British, Irish, American, Australian, African, Canadian, New Zealand, Indian and Caribbean • Illustrated throughout with over 115 photographs and line drawings

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #755121 in Books
• Published on: 1993-10-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1067 pages

Review
‘... immense browsability.’ Anthony Burgess, The Observer

‘... an indispensable and indeed path-breaking guide’. The L. A. Times

‘... conceptually generous ... on overall points Cambridge wins. Its breadth of vision is the chief reason’. The Guardian

Customer Reviews

Great if you are interested in literature & it's history.
This guide to literature is the most comprehensive that I have yet found, it covers a variety of subjects and it is really good if you are an English student like me who has to write an essay and do research on various authors and the history behind English literature. It offers a wide range of information on many popular authors so even if you are not a student you will still find it interesting. The down point that I found was that with it being such a large book it took a while to find the exact information but it was eaier than having to search the local library!!

buyer beware
Several things about this book annoy me, but one thing makes me a bit irate. A reference book isn't worth a good deal unless the editors make every effort to be objective and accurate and this one isn't consistently either. (Mine is the Head edition, so perhaps I'm being unfair to the others.) I've skipped about reading entries and have thus read that George Gissing had only one friend and that his marriages failed because Gissing felt that his wives weren't sufficiently grateful to him. I've also learned that Isabel Burton burned her husband's writings because he drank a lot and travelled a lot.
These don't seem to me simply sloppy inaccuracies. They're so supremely removed from the factual as to seem, particularly in the Gissing entry, the product of malevolence. Why? Because they're dead white men--or, worse, dead white Victorian men? Because the writer(s) didn't approve of their books? And if I lit upon these porkies by chance, how many more are there in the volume? I'm keeping the book because it has entries on the more modern British writers, but I'm taking it all with a packload of salt--and I'm pitying that student reviewer who might be relying upon it.
For an infinitely superior reference, get THE READER'S ENCYCLOPEDIA, ed. Benet. Not only does it seem objective and accurate but it has the enormous bonus of covering non-Anglophone literature.