Now under the joint editorship of Dinah Birch and Margaret Drabble, with over 150 contributors including Penelope Fitzgerald, Salman Rushdie and John Sutherland, The Oxford Companion to English Literature remains the most authoritative, informative and accessible literary guide. Thousands of enlightening and entertaining entries cover all aspects of literature written in English, including writers, critics, characters and prizes, spanning a millennium from Beowulf to the Booker Prize. This 7th edition has been thoroughly revised and updated with over 1,000 new entries, with profiles of new writers like David Mitchell and Arundhati Roy, increased coverage of American works and in-depth features on popular genres such as children’s literature, crime fiction and travel literature.