In this incredibly broad-ranging book, covering over 100 writers, Owen Dudley Edwards looks at the literary inheritance when the war broke out and asks whether children's literary diet was altered in the war temporarily or permanently. Concerned with the effects of the war as a whole on what children could read during the war and what they made of it, he reveals the implications of this for the world they would come to inhabit.

This revised edition of Shakespeare A to Z: An Essential Guide to His Life and Work (1990), also written by Boyce, has more than 3,000 entries. Like the earlier work, it covers all aspects of Shakespeare and his writings. In place of a single alphabetical arrangement, however, readers will find content organized into several sections. The new arrangement puts Shakespeare's works at center stage and casts the related topics in a supporting role.

This book offers readers a concise introduction to Atwood's published novels and the central themes motivating her writing. The volume starts with an overview of the author's biography and the relationship of her writing to relevant literary traditions. Because Atwood is internationally renowned, many commentaries ignore the Canadian roots of her work. Cooke corrects this oversight by sketching the ways in which her work is shaped by, and has shaped, the Canadian literary scene. As the author of a full-length Atwood biography, Cooke is able to summarize feminist, Canadian nationalist, and postmodern influences on Atwood's work and on her development as a writer.

Another entry in the publisher's redesign of its old Literary A to Z series, this one an update of the volume on Dickens published in 1998. Following a seven-page biography, separate sections deal with "Works A–Z" and "Related People, Places, and Topics." Appendixes provide a chronology and bibliographies of primary and secondary sources. As with other volumes in the revamped series, one of the most useful features is the detailed coverage of major works, with synopsis, commentary, and character entries.

The Companion embraces the full range of this rich and heterogeneous subject, covering: specific British and Irish novels and novelists ranging from Samuel Beckett to Salman Rushdie; particular subgenres such as the feminist novel and the postcolonial novel; overarching cultural, political, and literary trends such as screen adaptations and the literary prize phenomenon. All the essays are informed by current critical and theoretical debates, but are designed to be accessible to non-specialists.