Examines great writers, important works, memorable characters, and influential movements and events in world literature.

Provides information on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and timeframes by combining content from reference works, monographs, classic books and anthologies, and literary journals.

Provides biographical information about authors as well as literary criticism.

Distills the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world’s most-studied literature in addition to author biographical information.

Contains essays concerned with the novel's role in engaging and shaping the world and essays on significant work on fiction and related areas of research and theory.