Rating: 
Summary: Encyclopedic information. But... on newsprint?
Review: Under twenty dollars for a well thought-out, expertly assembled dictionary of over a thousand pages makes this Penguin an excellent purchase. As for the content, I will simply "second" the observations of earlier reviewers - and recommend that you look through their notes below to be sure this is what you want. This review is just to offer...One CAVEAT: This inch-and-three-quarters paperback is extremely valuable and deserves to get well thumbed-over by any student of English literature or criticism in general. One could only wish that the publisher had released it in a "quality paperback" format that would better survive such thumbing. The present release (a 2000 paperback reissue of the 1998 hardback) is closer in quality to a mass market paperback, with newsprint grade paper, etc. Annotators and highlighters will find their inks bleeding severely through the pages. Unfortunately, few of us will have the C-note to lay out for the (presumably much better produced) hardback edition... which would be a *real* treat to keep at one's writing table. Until you win the lottery(or Penguin releases a quality paperback), grab the affordable paperback: it's rewarding enough to keep you *wanting* to highlight, although disappointing when you do.
Rating:
Summary: Encyclopedic information. But... on newsprint?
Review: Under twenty dollars for a well thought-out, expertly assembled dictionary of over a thousand pages makes this Penguin an excellent purchase. As for the content, I will simply "second" the observations of earlier reviewers - and recommend that you look through their notes below to be sure this is what you want. This review is just to offer... One CAVEAT: This inch-and-three-quarters paperback is extremely valuable and deserves to get well thumbed-over by any student of English literature or criticism in general. One could only wish that the publisher had released it in a "quality paperback" format that would better survive such thumbing. The present release (a 2000 paperback reissue of the 1998 hardback) is closer in quality to a mass market paperback, with newsprint grade paper, etc. Annotators and highlighters will find their inks bleeding severely through the pages. Unfortunately, few of us will have the C-note to lay out for the (presumably much better produced) hardback edition... which would be a *real* treat to keep at one's writing table. Until you win the lottery(or Penguin releases a quality paperback), grab the affordable paperback: it's rewarding enough to keep you *wanting* to highlight, although disappointing when you do.
Rating:
Summary: Encyclopedic information. But... on newsprint?
Review: Under twenty dollars for a well thought-out, expertly assembled dictionary of over a thousand pages makes this Penguin an excellent purchase. As for the content, I will simply "second" the observations of earlier reviewers - and recommend that you look through their notes below to be sure this is what you want. This review is just to offer... One CAVEAT: This inch-and-three-quarters paperback is extremely valuable and deserves to get well thumbed-over by any student of English literature or criticism in general. One could only wish that the publisher had released it in a "quality paperback" format that would better survive such thumbing. The present release (a 2000 paperback reissue of the 1998 hardback) is closer in quality to a mass market paperback, with newsprint grade paper, etc. Annotators and highlighters will find their inks bleeding severely through the pages. Unfortunately, few of us will have the C-note to lay out for the (presumably much better produced) hardback edition... which would be a *real* treat to keep at one's writing table. Until you win the lottery(or Penguin releases a quality paperback), grab the affordable paperback: it's rewarding enough to keep you *wanting* to highlight, although disappointing when you do.
Rating:
Summary: Bean Counters Literary Dream
Review: You get a lot of value for the money with this one. For a reasonable price you get almost 1000 pages of literary information. Every obscure literary term imaginable is here, but that's not why I am taking the time to praise this handy little volume. It's a browsers dream. What I found most interesting were the lengthy sections on genres. There are pages devoted to specific types of novels, dramas, and poems. There are luxuriously long sections on science fiction novels, crime fiction, pastoral writings, short stories, gothic fiction, comic drama, and a host of other such topics. When you go to the short story section, for instance, you will find 12 pages dedicated to coverage of authors and their works dating from biblical times to the present (1998). I quickly found recommended writers that I hadn't known along with those I was well acquainted with. Although this book was inexpensive, I have spent many times its purchase price buying new books that I found referenced in this Dictionary. There are no individual entries for authors or their works in this book. For that you need to go to books like the Oxford, Cambridge, New York Public Library or Benet's literature reference works. In poetry sections you will find examples of the type of verse being discussed. You will be amused at some of the entries provided under "light verse" and "limericks". There is even a heading for "shaggy dog story". Any weaknesses to the book? Well there are a few. This book has a single author, unlike many reference works that have a group of contributors. This can lead to weak sections that are outside the solo author's expertise. Every reader will find a favorite author or two missing from the genre sections. I was appalled, for instance, to find no mention of Flannery O'Connor in the section on American short story authors. As the author is English, there may also be a slight bias toward English writers. I was also somewhat annoyed that Mr. Cuddon often -but not always- didn't take the time to give a foreign title its English translation. Would it have hurt him to list the Victor Hugo novel as "Toilers of the Sea" instead of "Les Travailleurs de le Mer"? I am a hopeless book addict, and this little reference work really made my day(s).
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