"This illustrated and fully updated Third Edition of The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English is the most authoritative and international survey of world literature in English available. The Guide covers everything from Old English to contemporary writing from all over the English-speaking world. There are entries on writers from Britain and Ireland, the USA, Canada, India, Africa, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific, as well as on many important poems, novels, literary journals and plays. This new edition has been brought completely up to date with more than 280 new author entries, most of them for living authors. The general reader will find it fascinating to browse and to discover many new writers and works, while students will find it an invaluable resource for daily use. This is a unique work of reference for the twenty-first century that no reader or library should be without."--BOOK JACKET