Britain has a rich heritage of school buildings dating from the later Middle Ages to the present day. While some of these schools have attracted the attention of architectural historians, they have not previously been considered from the educational viewpoint. Even schools of little or no architectural interest are important sociologically, since the changing architecture of schools reflects changing ideas about how children should be educated and organized for teaching purposes. Documentary material relating to education is often fragmentary, and buildings may thus constitute the only real source of knowledge about the development of particular schools and can also throw light on general educational history. Originally published in 1971 and 1977, these books are, therefore, not only a major contribution to architectural history but also a study in the development of educational ideas and practices from the fourteenth to the twentieth century.

More than fifty specialists have contributed to this new edition of volume 2 of The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. The design of the original work has established itself so firmly as a workable solution to the immense problems of analysis, articulation and coordination that it has been retained in all its essentials for the new edition. The task of the new contributors has been to revise and integrate the lists of 1940 and 1957, to add materials of the following decade, to correct and refine the bibliographical details already available, and to re-shape the whole according to a new series of conventions devised to give greater clarity and consistency to the entries.