The concise Oxford companion to English literature

Based on the vastly popular Fifth Edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature, this indispensable volume offers over five thousand alphabetically arranged entries on individual novels, plays, songs, poems, novelists, poets, playwrights, essayists, philosophers, historians, fictional characters, literary movements, legends, and much more. Like its parent volume, this newly revised abridgement features useful plot summaries, separate entries on important fictional characters, and countless biographical articles on authors and other influential figures in the world of letters, all presented with the same lightness of touch that has made the original work such a pleasure to read. It covers topics once regarded as non-literary - detective stories, science fiction, children's stories, and comic strips among them - as well as important movements and critical theories, including the latest developments in Freudian and Marxist criticism. For this revised edition the editors have eliminated the most peripheral entries from the parent volume and have condensed many of the remaining articles, while retaining the clear and graceful style that characterized the original. Existing entries have been fully updated and sixty new entries have been added on contemporary writers. Also included are new appendices listing winners of major literary awards, including the Nobel, Pulitzer, and Booker prizes. It is a book that no home library should be without.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.