"The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature" is an essential companion to a literary tradition of extraordinary depth. Now published at a popular price, this massive one-volume encyclopedia extends from Aneirin and the poet of Widsith to Caedmon and the author of "Beowulf"; from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Geoffrey Chaucer; from Spenser to Shakespeare; from Donne to Milton to Dryden; from Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen to William Blake; from Thackeray, the Brontes, and Dickens to Virginia Woolf, Jonathan Coe, and Zadie Smith. This magisterial volume is a guide to literature that is British in scope and origin, including surveys of the literatures written in English from the colonial to the postcolonial experience in Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India, Ireland, and New Zealand. The contributors, from the UK and US, are all experts in their fields, and include: R. S. White on William Blake; W. H. New on Canadian Literature in English; Derek Brewer on Geoffrey Chaucer; Ian Ousby on Detective Fiction before 1945; David Kirby on Expatriates; Merryn Williams on Thomas Hardy; Sandie Byrne on Tony Harrison; Fred Marchant on Ted Hughes; Peter Barnes on Ben Jonson; Ian MacKillop on F. R. Leavis; Norman Kelvin on William Morris; Claire Tomalin on Samuel Pepys; and Peter Finch on "Poetry since 1945."

Author Biography

Steven R. Serafin is a leading authority on modern world literature. He is general editor of The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature as well as general editor of the new edition of the Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century. He is affiliated with Hunter College of The City University of New York.