Customer Reviews

The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English

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Those two authors share space in this magnificent reference volume on English Literature. The sturdy, oversized Guide presents over one thousand pages of information on authors, novels, poetry, drama, and literary terms. There are interesting biographies of prominent writers and obscure ones, from Mrs. Humphrey Ward to William Faulkner.

Good plot summaries are provided for a wide range of novels. If you are a fan of Anthony Trollope, you will find no less than twenty five of his books discussed. You have to be careful, however, if you are reading the plot of a book in order to decided whether or not you want to read it - the ending is always given away. The Cambridge Guide explores many literary terms: Meter; the Bloomsbury Group; positivism; and post-structuralism. There are also entries on Literary Journals - yes, the New York Review of Books is here as well as Granta.

The Cambridge Guide is written for the average layman and avoids academic jargon. I decided to try the entry on "deconstruction" as the extreme test of explaining difficult concepts. It's hard to say: either they failed the test, or I failed it.

This book has become one of my prized possessions, and I would have been willing to buy it at twice the price charged.

The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English provides a wide array of supplementary reading material to accompany lecture notes or for students to grasp overall concepts of a particular work, author, or literary movement.

Since I am the first to review this book, it is important that I let you know just how much information is in here.

Writers - poets, novelists, playwrights, theologians, philosophers, economists, naturalists, scientists, essayists, critics, and historians

Individual plays, poems, novels, and other works

Literary groups or schools - I.E. the Lake Poets, the Beats, the Movement, and the Black Mountain School

Wider literary movements - I.E. neoclassicism, Romanticism, modernism, and post modernism

Critical schools or movements - I.E. the New Criticism, structuralism, post structuralism, deconstruction, and ethical criticism

Literary genres - I.E. comedy, and tragedy, fable, farce and melodrama

Poetic forms and sub-genres of drama and fiction - I.E. acrostic, the elegy, the revenge tragedy, and the Gothic novel

Critical terms - I.E. metaphor, symbol, dialogism, intertextuality, and unreliable narrator

Rhetorical terms - I.E. anaphora, bathos, chiasmus, synecdoche, and zeugma

Theaters and theater companies - I.E. the Globe, the King's Men, the Federal Theater Project, and the Sistren Theater Collective

Literary magazines - I.E. The Quarterly Review and Punch, The New Masses, and Staffrider

So, as you can see, the list is quite extensive, helpful, and interesting.