Sir Paul Harvey's original Oxford Companion to English Literature, published in 1932, was the book that began Oxford's celebrated Companion series. In its various editions in the half-century since then, it was enjoyed an enormously faithful following. Now, for the Fifth Edition, the eminent novelist and biographer Margaret Drabble has put together the most substantial and significant revision in the history of this essential reference work.
The important features long distinguishing the Companion remain intact: the useful plot summaries, the separate entries on important fictional characters, the countless biographical articles on authors and other important figures in the world of letters, the lightness of touch that makes the book a pleasure to read. This is an invaluable volume for libraries large and small, for teachers, for students - indeed, for everyone interested in English literature.
Drabble's revisions not only bring the book up to date; they both deepen and widen its appeal. Topics once regarded as non-literary - detective stories, science fiction, children's literature, comic strips, for example - are now included, as are numerous foreign-language authors who have become well-known in translation. The book covers all the important movements and critical theories (including the latest developments in Freudian and Marxist criticism and Saussurean linguistics and its successors). What is more, the entries on classic works - Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queen and many others - now incorporate the findings of the latest scholarship. In still another innovation, the book offers the reader a guide to further study and research by referring to the relevant biographies, memoirs, critical studies, and standards scholarly editions of many of the important works. There are also entries on composers who have adapted English texts to musical forms and articles on visual artists whose work has been touched by the English literary consciousness. The book's appendices on censorship, copyright, and the calendar have been thoroughly updated, and the exhaustive cross-referencing system in the manner of the more recent Companions has been adopted.