Research Guides: ENGL 290 Research Methods McGraw: Useful Encyclopedias and Handbooks

ENGL 290 Your Guide to Research Methods and Critical Perspectives

Encyclopedias, Handbooks, and Companions

Oxford Companion to American Literature This link opens in a new window
Over 2,000 biographical profiles of important American authors (with information regarding their style, subjects, and major works) and influential foreign writers as well as other figures who have been important in the nation's social and cultural history. There are more than 1,100 full summaries of important American novels, stories, essays, poems (with verse form noted), plays, biographies and autobiographies, tracts, narratives, and histories.
Oxford Companion to English Literature This link opens in a new window
The Oxford Companion to English Literature has long been established as the leading reference resource for students, teachers, scholars, and general readers of English literature. It provides unrivalled coverage of all aspects of English literature ? from writers, their works, and the historical and cultural context in which they wrote, to critics, literary theory, and allusions.
Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms This link opens in a new window
Provides clear, concise, and often witty definitions of the most troublesome literary terms from abjection to zeugma.
Dictionary of Writers and their Works This link opens in a new window
An essential guide to authors and their works that focuses on the general canon of British literature from the fifteenth-century to the present. There is also some coverage of non-fiction such as biographies, memoirs, and science, as well as inclusion of major American and Commonwealth writers.

The Cambridge Companion to Mary Shelley by Esther Schor
ISBN: 0511064152
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Well-known scholars review Mary Shelley's work in several contexts (literary history, aesthetic and literary culture, the legacies of her parents) and also analyze her most famous work-- Frankenstein. The contributors also examine Shelley as a biographer, cultural critic, and travel writer. The text is supplemented by a chronology, guide to further reading and select filmography.
A Companion to the Brontës by Diane Long Hoeveler; Deborah Denenholz Morse
ISBN: 1118405544
Publication Date: 2016-04-08
A Companion to the Brontës brings the latest literary research and theory to bear on the life, work, and legacy of the Brontë family. Includes sections on literary and critical contexts, individual texts, historical and cultural contexts, reception studies, and the family's continuing influence Features in-depth articles written by well-known and emerging scholars from around the world Addresses topics such as the Gothic tradition, film and dramatic adaptation, psychoanalytic approaches, the influence of religion, and political and legal questions of the day - from divorce and female disinheritance, to worker reform Incorporates recent work in Marxist, feminist, post-colonial, and race and gender studies
Oscar Wilde in Context by Kerry Powell (Editor); Peter Raby (Editor)
ISBN: 1139060104
Publication Date: 2013-12-18
Oscar Wilde was a courageous individualist whose path-breaking life and work were shaped in the crucible of his time and place, deeply marked by the controversies of his era. This collection of concise and illuminating articles reveals the complex relationship between Wilde's work and ideas, and contemporary contexts including Victorian feminism, aestheticism and socialism. Chapters investigate how Wilde's writing was both a resistance to and quotation of Victorian master narratives and genre codes. From performance history to film and operatic adaptations, the ongoing influence and reception of Wilde's story and work is explored, proposing not one but many Oscar Wildes. To approach the meaning of Wilde as an artist and historical figure, the book emphasises not only his ability to imagine new worlds, but also his bond to the turbulent cultural and historical landscape around him - the context within which his life and art took shape.
The Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin by Janet Beer (Editor)
ISBN: 9780521883443
Publication Date: 2008-09-18
Although she enjoyed only modest success during her lifetime, Kate Chopin is now recognised as a unique voice in American literature. Her seminal novel, The Awakening, published in 1899, explored new and startling territory, and stunned readers with its frank depiction of the limits of marriage and motherhood. Chopin's aesthetic tastes and cultural influences were drawn from both the European and American traditions, and her manipulation of her 'foreignness' contributed to the composition of a complex voice that was strikingly different to that of her contemporaries. The essays in this Companion treat a wide range of Chopin's stories and novels, drawing her relationship with other writers, genres and literary developments, and pay close attention to the transatlantic dimension of her work. The result is a collection that brings a fresh perspective to Chopin's writing, one that will appeal to researchers and students of American, nineteenth-century, and feminist literature.