Subject & Research Guides: English Language & Literature: Reference Shelf

Reference Sources

Online Sources
Print Sources

Use reference books as background sources to get quick facts or information, or an overview of a subject. Some examples of reference sources are: dictionaries, encyclopedias, bibliographies, almanacs, directories, atlases, and handbooks.

Oxford English Dictionary
A guide to the meaning, history, and usage of 500,000 words and phrases from across the English-speaking world.
Dictionary of National Biography
Contains over 60,000 illustrated biographies of influential individuals from British history.

Introduction to Literary Studies
This concise introduction provides a general survey of various aspects of textual studies for college students who intend to specialize in English or American literature and want to acquire a basic familiarity with the entire field.
A Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford)
Containing over 1000 literary terms, this book gives clear explanations to terms such as hypertext, multi-accentuality, and postmodernism. Among the book's features are: extensive coverage of traditional drama, rhetoric, literary history, and textual criticism; and advice on further reading.
A New Handbook of Literary Terms
A New Handbook of Literary Terms offers a lively, informative guide to words and concepts that every student of literature needs to know. Mikic's definitions are essayistic, witty, learned, and always a pleasure to read.
The Poetry Handbook
The Poetry Handbook is a lucid and entertaining guide to the poet's craft, and an invaluable introduction to practical criticism for students.
Encyclopedia of Literary Romanticism
This ebook can be used by all Novanet patrons. SMU patrons will require an S number and password to access the book.
A History of Victorian Literature
Incorporating a broad range of contemporary scholarship, A History of Victorian Literature presents an overview of the literature produced in Great Britain between 1830 and 1900, with fresh consideration of both major figures and some of the era's less familiar authors.
Modernism
This guide helps readers to engage with the major critical debates surrounding literary modernism. A judicious selection of key critical works on literary modernism, It presents a critical history from the earliest reviews to the most recent theoretical assessments, and discusses how modernism relates to modernity and modernization, and to other literary and cultural movements. Texts have been selected for their relevance to the questions surrounding modernism. It includes a glossary and an annotated bibliography.
Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada
This resource book provides information about writers and writing in Canada, about oral literatures, and about a range of related subjects, including the social and cultural institutions that have an impact on literary expression and literary production.
The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature
The second edition of the acclaimed Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature has been thoroughly updated with more than 340 new entries on new writers, new books, and extended entries on established authors.
A Companion to Postcolonial Studies
This volume examines the changes that have occurred and are still occurring in the aftermath of European colonization of the globe from 1492 to 1947.

Books with REF in the call number are located on the first floor. Books with GEN are on the second or third floors.

All Things Austen	PR 4036 A275 2005 REF
Dictionary of Literary Biography	PN 451 D52 REF
Dictionary of Literary Influence Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Fiction	Z 1039 C45 D53 REF PS 374 C48 T57 2009 REF
Encylopedia of Feminist Literature Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory	PN 471 W455 2004 REF PN 81 E435 2011 REF
Encyclopedia of American Literature	PS 21 E537 2004 REF
Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia	PN 41 B4 2008 REF
Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada	PS 8015 E53 2002 REF
Feminist Companion to Literature in English	PR 111 F45 1990 REF
New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics	PN 1021 N39 1993 REF
Oxford Companion to English Literature	PR 19 O94 2009 REF
Oxford Companion to Shakespeare	PR 2892 O94 2001 REF
Encyclopedia of the Novel	PN 41 E485 2011 REF