This text is an introduction to the full range of standard reference tools in all branches of English studies. More than 10,000 titles are included. The Reference Guide covers all the areas traditionally defined as English studies and all the field of inquiry more recently associated with English studies. British and Irish, American and world literatures written in English are included. Other fields covered are folklore, film, literary theory, general and comparative literature, language and linguistics, rhetoric and composition, bibliography and textual criticism and women's studies.

This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

A unique work of international reference with more than 300 individual articles on the most important authors, this resource tells the fascinating story of the development of the literature from its humble beginnings in 1887 to its worldwide use in every literary genre today.