LibGuides: English Literature: Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and more

What are reference sources?

Reference sources (encyclopedias, dictionaries, directories, etc.) can help you get an overview of your topic. They can give you access to in-depth, authoritative articles on your topic and help you identify essential readings in the field. They are also useful for clarifying terms or concepts that you are less familiar with, and for identifying keywords to use when searching for more information.

Dictionary of Literary Biography This link opens in a new window
The series provides reliable information on authors and their works in an easy to understand, engaging format, while placing writers in the larger perspective of literary history.
Oxford English Dictionary This link opens in a new window
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.
Literary Encyclopedia This link opens in a new window
The Literary Encyclopedia is an original literary reference work, written by specialists from universities around the world. It provides over 3200 authoritative profiles, usually around 2500 words in length, of authors, works and topics written by over 1200 experts.

The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism
A survey of the field's most important figures, schools, and movements. It includes more than 240 entries on critics and theorists, critical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods.

The Cambridge History of the Gothic: Vol. 1, Gothic in the Long Eighteenth Century by Angela Wright (Editor); Dale Townshend (Editor); Catherine Spooner (Editor)
Publication Date: 2020
The Cambridge History of the Gothic: Volume 2, Gothic in the Nineteenth Century by Angela Wright (Editor); Dale Townshend (Editor); Catherine Spooner (Editor)
Publication Date: 2020
The Cambridge History of the Gothic: Volume 3, Gothic in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries by Catherine Spooner (Editor); Dale Townshend (Editor)
Publication Date: 2021
Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English by Eugene Benson; L. W. Conolly
Publication Date: 2005
This Encyclopedia documents the history and development of Post-Colonial Literatures in English and includes original research relating to the literatures of some 50 countries and territories. In more than 1,600 entries written by more than 600 internationally recognized scholars, it explores the effect of the colonial and post-colonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature by David Scott Kastan (Editor)
Publication Date: 2006
The Encyclopedia provides comprehensive coverage of literature from the Abbey Theatre to Israel Zangwill, covering the entire history of literature in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in the major literary languages. It includes substantial accounts of individual authors and detailed histories of particular themes, movements, genres, and institutions, whose impact upon the writing or the reading of literature was significant.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature by Jay Parini
Publication Date: 2004
This award-winning Encyclopedia surveys the vibrant terrain of American literature in 350 essays from leading scholars, encompassing the range and depth of American literary history from the 1600s to the present day. The Encyclopedia includes essays on poets, playwrights, essayists, and novelists, as well as major works and essays on literary movements, periods, and themes.
The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory by Michael Ryan
Publication Date: 2011
A comprehensive encyclopedia of literary and cultural theory. Covers Literary Theory from 1900 to 1966, Literary Theory from 1966 to the present, and Cultural Theory. This encyclopedia provides accessible entries on the important concepts, theorists and trends in post-1900 literary and cultural theory. With explanations of complex terms and important theoretical concepts, and summaries of the work and ideas of key figures, it is a highly informative reference work for a multi-disciplinary readership

The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Dominic Head
Call Number: Killam Library Reference Collection (PR 85 C29 2006)
Publication Date: 2006
The Guide covers everything from Old English to Contemporary Writing from all over the english-speaking world. There are entries on writers from Britain, Ireland, USA, Canada, India, Africa, South Africa, New Zealand, the South Pacific and Australia.
The Oxford Companion to American Literature by James D. Hart
Call Number: Killam Library Reference Collection (PS 21 H32 1995)
Publication Date: 1995
Over 2,000 biographical profiles of important American authors (with information regarding their style, subjects, and major works) and influential foreign writers.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature by Margaret Drabble
Call Number: Killam Library Reference Collection (PR 19 O94 2006 )
Publication Date: 2006
The leading reference resource for 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.
Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature by Mary Ellen Snodgrass
Call Number: Killam Library Reference Collection (PN 3435 S58 2005)
Publication Date: 2004-11-01
A-to-Z guide to Gothic literature covering everything from the origins of the movement in the 18th century to the movement's flowering in the 19th century to its continuing influence today
The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature by Dino Franco Felluga; Pamela K. Gilbert
Call Number: Killam Library Reference Collection (PR 451 E553 2015 )
Publication Date: 2015-08-17
Comprehensive, scholarly, authoritative, and critical overview of literature and theory comprising individual titles covering key literary genres, periods, and sub-disciplines.

Biographical information

Dictionary of Literary Biography This link opens in a new window
The award-winning Gale Literature: Dictionary of Literary Biography provides comprehensive access to the series dedicated to making literature and its creators better understood and more accessible to students and interested readers while simultaneously satisfying the standards of librarians, teachers, and scholars. The series provides reliable information on authors and their works in an easy to understand, engaging format, while placing writers in the larger perspective of literary history. Dictionary of Literary Biography includes the main series, documentary, and yearbook volumes.
Orlando This link opens in a new window
Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present includes biographical and writing career entries on British women writers, selected non-British or international women writers, and selected British and international men. Also includes dated items representing events and processes in the accounts of these writers, but also in the areas of history, science, medicine, economics, the law, and other contexts.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new window
An illustrated collection of more than 50,000 specially written biographies of the men and women who shaped all aspects of Britain's past. This resource includes remarkable people from any walk of life who were connected with the British Isles, excluding living people. It includes not just the great and good, but people who have left a mark for any reason, good, bad, or bizarre.
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Other key reference sources

Cambridge Histories Online This link opens in a new window
This diverse, up to date and authoritative collection is unique to Cambridge Histories Online and offers vastly improved accessibility to the print editions published since the 1960s. It provides full text online access to the complete 250-plus volumes of Cambridge Histories reference series covering the political, economic and social history, philosophy and literature of selected countries and subjects.
Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference is an online reference library that provides you with access to a selection of more than 1000 reference books and over 200,000 related images. It includes encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and books of quotations, not to mention a range of subject-specific titles covering everything from art to accountancy and literature to law.
English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) This link opens in a new window
Lists over 460,000 items * published between 1473 and 1800 * mainly in Britain and North America * mainly, but not exclusively, in English * from the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries.
Lexicons of Early Modern English (public version) This link opens in a new window
LEME searches and displays word-entries from monolingual English dictionaries, bilingual lexicons, technical vocabularies, and other encyclopedic-lexical works, 1480-1702.
Oxford Reference Online This link opens in a new window
Includes the following titles: The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, etc.