Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography

This eight-volume set provides thorough coverage of major British literary figures of all eras - from Ben Jonson to Harold Pinter. Each volume covers 20 or 30 writers from all genres who were active during a single historical period as follows: volume one - writers of the Middle Ages and Renaissance before 1660, including Francis Bacon, John Donne and Christopher Marlowe; volume two - writers of the Restoration and 18th-century, 1660-1789, including Henry Fielding, John Milton and Jonathan Swift; volume three - writers of the romantic period, 1789-1832, including Jane Austen, John Keats and William Wordsworth; volume four - Victorian writers, 1832-1890, including Emily Bronte, Lewis Carroll and Charles Dickens; volume five - late Victorian and Edwardian writers, 1890-1914, including Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde; volume six - modern writers, 1914-1945, including W.H. Auden, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf; volume seven - writers after World War II, 1945-1960, including Graham Greene, Edith Sitwell and Dylan Thomas; and volume eight - contemporary writers, 1960-present, including Margaret Drabble, V.S. Naipaul and Edna O'Brien.;Each entry contains three main elements: a bibliography of the author's works; biocritical essays, discussing each author's life and works in the context of literary history; and sources for further study.