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RR 2010/120 The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7th edition) Edited by Dinah Birch Oxford University Press Oxford 2009 xiv + 1164 pp. ISBN 978 0 19 280687 1 £35 $125
Keyword English literature
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121011030779
The first edition of this now classic reference work was published in 1932 under the editorship of Sir Paul Hardy. Many readers are likely to be familiar with editions edited by Margaret Drabble who took over editorship in 1985 for the 5th edition. Readers will be familiar with the changes made as the editions move from fifth edition in 1985, to a revised fifth in 1995, the 2000 6th edition, followed by the revised sixth in 2006. The transition from fifth to sixth edition demonstrates how the Companion is updated to reflect the current English Literature "landscape". Entries that did not appear in the 5th edition but do in the sixtii and revised 6th include: fantasy fiction, ghost stories, gothic fiction, postcolonial literature, spy fiction and the addition of "and post structuralism" to an entry on Structuralism. Their inclusion in later editions reflects the move towards studying (and arguably, marketing) fiction within genres. Similarly, the addition of Post-Structuralism to Structuralism reflects the absorption of Post-Structuralism into mainstream academic literary practise.
The sixth editions feature essays on the aforementioned topics plus at least nine other topical entries. These expanded entries appear on pages with grey background and black boarders - a design which serves to make these essays stand out as features, separate from other entries. Whilst there are changes in emphasis and entries are updated as the series moves between the fifth and sixth editions, the move to this seventh edition is a major shift. It seems that the change in editor of this classic text has allowed for the Companion to undergo a major overhaul. So large scale is this overhaul that the seventh edition has an Index of New and Heavily Revised Entries by Contributor that runs to fourteen pages and appears to cover most entries. This inclusion is useful to readers accustomed to the fifth and sixth editions, and adds another dimension to the seventh edition by facilitating comparison between editions, in line with current scholarship practices where there is an interest in tracing how...