English Language and Literature Subject Guide

Many reference book are listed here. They will provide background information on your topic.

This eight-volume set, completed in 2005, is a "comprehensive narrative and analysis of four centuries of achievement in all genres of writing. The authors include many of the most eminent scholars working in the field today." You may view a list of the volumes. The library also has printed volumes, as well as the first edition.

A five-volume set in printed form (2006), this encyclopedia contains 500 signed substantial essays which cover "the entire history of British literature from the seventh century to the present, focusing on the writers and the major texts of what are now the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland," including biographies and topical essays with detailed analyses of particular themes, movements, genres, and institutions.

The OED is the accepted authority on the history of words in the English language. It is the most important guide to the meaning and history of over a half-million words, both past and present, tracing the meanings of these words through the use of over 2.5 million quotations, drawn from a wide range of sources. The database contains the Second Edition and additions, including quarterly updates of at least 1,000 new and revised entries.

Large database containing extensive biographical and critical information on writers, movements, and works from virtually all time periods.

Based on the fifth edition (2008) of James L. Harner's "comprehensive and reliable tool", now kept up-to-date in an online form. The guide surveys English-language literature -- English, American, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Caribbean, and Commonwealth Literature -- with more than 1,000 entries describing the research process and specific reference works and online resources. Purchased with the library's Parents' Weekend book sale funds.

Provides clear, concise, and often witty definitions of the most troublesome literary terms from abjection to zeugma. It offers readers increased coverage of new terms from modern critical and theoretical movements, such as feminism, and schools of American poetry, Spanish verse forms, life writing, and crime fiction. It includes extensive coverage of traditional drama, versification, rhetoric, and literary history, as well as updated and extended advice on recommended further reading and a pronunciation guide to more than 200 terms.

The Oxford DNB aims to provide full, accurate, concise, and readable articles on noteworthy people in all walks of life. No living person is included: the Dictionary's articles are confined to people who died before 31 December 2000.