The Oxford companion to English literature

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When the fifth edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature appeared, The New York Times Book Review, in a front-page review, hailed it as "a wonderful, infuriating, amusing, and informative war horse of a book" and "a source of real delight," adding "No wonder the book is, as Miss Drabble says, 'much loved'." Now, Margaret Drabble has updated the fifth edition, adding sixty completely new entries and revising the entries on contemporary writers.
Readers will find many new faces here. Drabble has introduced dozens of contemporary novelists, poets, and other literary figures, including Martin Amis, Wendy Cope, Salman Rushdie, David Hare, P.D. James, Paul Theroux, A.N. Wilson, Anita Brookner, J.M. Coetzee, Robertson Davies, Thomas Keneally, David Malouf, Toni Morrison, and Gore Vidal. There are also new appendices listing winners of major literary prizes--including the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Booker Prize--and a full chronology spanning nearly a thousand years of English literature, from Beowulf to the present day. Of course, the Companion continues to offer unmatched coverage of English literature, from its classical roots (with entries on Homer, Plato, Virgil, and Catullus) to its European influences (from Rabelais and Goethe to Cervantes, Schiller, and Baudelaire). The curious will find information on fictional characters, the plots of major works, literary and artistic movements, critical terms and theory, and much more.
Comprehensive, authoritative, and up to date, this revised edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature offers the most complete reference guide to our marvelous literary heritage.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• Advisers and Contributors
• Note to the Reader
• The Oxford Companion to English Literature
• Appendix 1 Chronology
• Appendix 2 Poets Laureate
• Appendix 3 Literary Awards

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Chapter One A Aaron's Rod, a novel by D. H. *Lawrence, published 1922.     The biblical Aaron was the brother of Moses, appointed priest by Jehovah, whose blossoming rod (Num. 17: 4-8) was a miraculous symbol of authority. In the novel Aaron Sisson, amateur flautist, forsakes his wife and his job as checkweighman at a colliery for a life of flute playing, quest, and adventure in bohemian and upper-class society. His flute is symbolically broken in the penultimate chapter as a result of a bomb explosion in Florence during political riots. Aaron the Moor, a character in Shakespeare's * Titus Andronicus , lover and accomplice of Tamora. Abbey Theatre, Dublin, opened on 27 Dec. 1904 with a double bill of one-act plays, W. B. *Yeats's On Baile's Strand and a comedy Spreading the News by Lady *Gregory. The theatre rapidly became a focus of the *Irish Revival. In 1903 Miss A. E. *Horniman, a friend of Yeats from his London days, had been introduced by him to the Irish National Theatre Society, an amateur company led by F. J. and W. G. Fay, which had already produced several plays by contemporary Irish writers, including Yeats's Cathleen and G. *Russell's (Æ's) Deirdre . She decided to provide a permanent Dublin home for the Society (which had Yeats for its president) and took over the disused theatre of the Mechanics' Institute in Abbey Street (built on the site of a previous Theatre Royal), together with the old city morgue next door, and converted them into the Abbey Theatre, with Lady Gregory as holder of the patent. The company, led by the Fays, with Sarah Allgood as principal actress, turned professional in 1906, with Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J. M. *Synge as directors, and in 1907 successfully survived the riots provoked by Synge's * The Playboy of the Western World . The Fays, who had become increasingly at loggerheads with Horniman, Yeats, and the leading players, left in 1908. In 1909 Lady Gregory, as patentee, withstood strong pressure from the lord-lieutenant to withdraw The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet , by G. B. *Shaw, before production; but the company staged it, almost uncut, knowing they might lose their patent. It was a great success and there was no more trouble with censorship.     Meanwhile Miss Horniman had become increasingly disenchanted with the company, and in 1910 did not renew her subsidy; however she offered the purchase of the theatre on generous terms, and Yeats and Lady Gregory became principal shareholders and managers. Over the years the early poetic dramas had been gradually replaced by more naturalistic prose works, written by *Colum, *Ervine, L. *Robinson, *O'Casey, and others. Robinson took over the management from Yeats in 1910 and with a short break continued until he became director in 1923. There were contentious but highly successful tours of Ireland, England, and the USA.     After the First World War the Abbey's finances became perilous, although O'Casey's Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926) brought some respite. In 1925 the Abbey received a grant from the new government of Eire, thus becoming the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world.     From the late 1930s more plays were performed in Gaelic, and actors were required to be bilingual. In 1951 the theatre was burned down, and the company played in the Queen's Theatre until the new Abbey opened in 1966, where the tradition of new writing by B. *Friel, Tom *Murphy, and others continues to flourish. ABBO OF FLEURY (?945-1004), a French theologian, author of the Epitome de Vitis Romanorum Pontificum and of lives of the saints. He was invited to England by *Oswald (bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York) to teach in his monastery of Ramsey; it was at the request of the monks of Ramsey, he tells us, that Abbo wrote his `Life of St Edmund' which was the source for *Ælfric's famous sermon. Abbo became abbot of Fleury where he died; during his abbacy *Aristotle's Categories was commented on and his Analytics copied in Fleury. Abbot The, a novel by Sir W. *Scott, published 1820, a sequel to * The Monastery . This novel, set around the escape of *Mary Queen of Scots from Loch Leven, largely redeemed the failure of The Monastery . It is much better constructed, but is remembered now mainly for the portrait of Mary herself, for attracting tourist trade to Loch Leven, and for being the first sequel novel in English, thus influencing the work of *Balzac, *Trollope, and many other 19th-cent. novelists. Abbotsford, the name of Sir W. *Scott's property near Melrose on the Tweed, purchased in 1811, which gave its name to the Abbotsford Club, founded in 1834 in memory of Sir W. Scott, for the purpose of publishing materials bearing on the history or literature of any country dealt with in Scott's writings. It ceased its publications in 1865. À BECKETT, Gilbert Abbott (1811-56), educated at Westminster School and called to the bar at Gray's Inn. He was the editor of Figaro in London and on the original staff of * Punch . He was for many years a leader writer on * The Times and the * Morning Herald , and was appointed a Metropolitan police magistrate in 1849. He wrote many plays and humorous works, including a Comic History of England (1847-8), a Comic History of Rome (1852), and a Comic Blackstone (1846). À BECKETT, Gilbert Arthur (1837-91), son of Gilbert Abbott *à Beckett, educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He was, from 1879, like his father, a regular member of the staff of * Punch . He wrote, in collaboration with W. S. *Gilbert, the successful comedy The Happy Land (1873). ABELARD, Peter (1079-1142), a native of Brittany, a brilliant disputant and lecturer at the schools of Ste Geneviève and Notre-Dame in Paris, where *John of Salisbury was among his pupils. He was an advocate of rational theological enquiry, and his Sic et Non could be regarded as the first text in scholastic theology (see Scholasticism). He was primarily a dialectician rather than a theologian, though his theological views were declared heretical by the Council of Sens (1142) where he was vigorously opposed by St *Bernard. He was a student of Roscelin, who is noted as the first *Nominalist and against whose views Abelard reacted. The preeminence of the University of Paris in the 12th cent. owes much to Abelard's popularity as a teacher. He fell in love with Héloïse, the niece of Fulbert, a canon of Notre-Dame in whose house he lodged; she was a woman of learning and Abelard's pupil. Their love ended in a tragic separation and a famous correspondence. Héloïse died in 1163 and was buried in Abelard's tomb. Pope's poem *`Eloisa to Abelard' was published in 1717. See J. G. Sikes, Peter Abailard (1932). ABERCROMBIE, Lascelles (188l-1938). He began as a literary journalist in Liverpool, and became successively lecturer in poetry at Liverpool University (1919-22), professor of poetry at Leeds (1922-9), and reader in English at Oxford. His first volume of verse, Interludes and Poems , appeared in 1908 and further volumes followed, including his collected Poems (1930) and the verse play The Sale of St Thomas (1931). Abercrombie contributed to * Georgian Poetry and several of his verse plays appeared in New Numbers (1914). Abessa, in Spenser's * Faerie Queene , I. iii, the `daughter of Corceca slow' (blindness of heart), and the personification of superstition. Abigail, in 1 Sam. 25, the wife of Nabal and subsequently of David. The name came to signify a waiting-woman, from the name of the `waiting gentlewoman' in The Scornful Lady by *Beaumont and Fletcher, so called possibly in allusion to the expression `thine handmaid', so frequently applied to herself by the biblical Abigail. ABLEMAN, Paul (1927- ), novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, born in Leeds. His experimental novel, I Hear Voices , was published in 1958 by the *Olympia Press, and his plays include Green Julia (perf. 1965, pub. 1966), a witty two-hander in which two young men discuss an absent mistress, and Tests (1966), which collects surreal playlets written for Peter *Brook's Theatre of *Cruelty. Abora, Mt, in Coleridge's *`Kubla Khan', is perhaps to be identified with Milton's Mt *Amara. See J. L. *Lowes, The Road to Xanadu (1927), 374-5. Absalom and Achitophel, an allegorical poem by *Dryden, published 1681.     A *mock-biblical satire based on 2 Sam. 13-19, it deals with certain aspects of the Exclusion crisis, notably the intrigues of the earl of Shaftesbury and the ambition of the duke of Monmouth to replace James duke of York as Charles II's heir. Various public figures are represented under biblical names, notably Monmouth (Absalom), *Shaftesbury (Achitophel), the duke of *Buckingham (Zimri), Charles II (David), *Oates (Corah), and Slingsby Bethel, sheriff of London (Shimei). The poem concludes with a long speech by David vigorously but paradoxically affirming Royalist principles, and asserting his determination to govern ruthlessly if he cannot do so mercifully.     In 1682 a second part appeared, mainly written by N. *Tate. However, it contains 200 lines by Dryden, in which he attacks two literary and political enemies, *Shadwell as Og and *Settle as Doeg. ABSE, Dannie (Daniel) (1923- ), doctor and poet, born in Cardiff of a Welsh-Jewish family. His first volume of poetry, After Every Green Thing (1948), was followed by many others, including Tenants of the House: Poems 1951-1956 (1957) and Collected Poems 1948-1976 (1977); in a foreword to the latter he notes that his poems are increasingly `rooted in actual experience', both domestic and professional, and many display a reconciliation between Jewish and Welsh themes and traditions. Other volumes include Ask the Bloody Horse (1986), White Coat, Purple Coat: Collected Poems 1948-88 (1989), Remembrance of Crimes Past (1990), and On the Evening Road (1994). His novels include Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve (1954), an account of Welsh boyhood and adolescence, and O. Jones, O. Jones (1970), about a Welsh medical student in London. A Poet in the Family (1974) is a volume of autobiography. Absentee, The, a novel by M. *Edgeworth, first published 1812 in Tales of Fashionable Life .     This novel of (largely) Irish life was first written as a play, refused by *Sheridan, then turned into a novel. A swift, vivacious story, the greater part of which is in conversation, it begins with the extravagant London life of the absentee Irish landlord Lord Clonbrony and his ambitious, worldly wife. The author shows Lady Clonbrony's attempts to buy her way into high society, her contempt for her Irish origins, and her treatment of her son Lord Colambre, who refuses to marry the heiress she provides for him. A sensible and distinguished young man, he gradually finds himself falling in love with his cousin Grace, and becomes increasingly appalled at his father's debts. He travels incognito to Ireland to visit the family estates and to see if his mother's dislike of Irish life is justified. Calling himself Evans, he visits the first of his father's estates, where he witnesses the dismissal, through a letter from Clonbrony, of the humane and honest agent Burke, who has been in much trouble with his master for not extorting sufficient income from the tenants and the land. The next estate is managed by the brothers Garraghty. Here the castle and church are half ruined, the roads are rutted, the land is ill-farmed, and the tenants are treated with callous indifference; but Lord Clonbrony is satisfied because (in spite of the Garraghtys' embezzlement) money is forthcoming. Colambre discovers that both his mother and his cousin Grace are remembered with affection by the people of the estates. He returns to London and tells his father that he will himself pay off the debts, on condition that the Garraghtys are dismissed and the Clonbrony family returns to live on its Irish estates. After the sorting out of various troubles, he and Grace become engaged, his mother resigns herself to her return, and the family leave London to live in Ireland. Absolute, Sir Anthony, and his son Captain Absolute, characters in Sheridan's * The Rivals . Absurd, Theatre of the, a term used to characterize the work of a number of European and American dramatists of the 1950s and early 1960s. As the term suggests, the function of such theatre is to give dramatic expression to the philosophical notion of the `absurd', a notion that had received widespread diffusion following the publication of *Camus's essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe in 1942. To define the world as absurd is to recognize its fundamentally mysterious and indecipherable nature, and this recognition is frequently associated with feelings of loss, purposelessness, and bewilderment. To such feelings, the Theatre of the Absurd gives ample expression, often leaving the observer baffled in the face of disjointed, meaningless, or repetitious dialogues, incomprehensible behaviour, and plots which deny all notion of logical or `realistic' development. But the recognition of the absurd nature of human existence also provided dramatists with a rich source of comedy, well illustrated in two early absurd plays, Ionesco's La Cantatrice chauve , written in 1948 ( The Bald Prima Donna , 1958), and *Beckett's En attendant Godot (1952; trans. by the author, * Waiting for Godot , 1954, subtitled `A Tragicomedy in Two Acts'). The Theatre of the Absurd drew significantly on popular traditions of entertainment, on mime, acrobatics, and circus clowning, and, by seeking to redefine the legitimate concerns of `serious' theatre, played an important role in extending the range of post-war drama. Amongst the dramatists associated with the Theatre of the Absurd are Arthur Adamov (1908-70), *Albee, Beckett, Camus, *Genet, Eugène Ionesco (1912-94), Alfred Jarry (1873-1907), *Pinter, and Boris Vian (1920-59). See also Cruelty, Theatre of. Académie française, a French literary academy, established by *Richelieu in 1634 to regulate and maintain the standards of the French language. One of its functions is the compilation and revision of a French dictionary, the first edition of which appeared in 1694 and the eighth in 1932-5. The Académie has, throughout its history, exercised a considerable influence on the course of French intellectual life. Academy, a periodical founded in 1869 as `a monthly record of literature, learning, science, and art' by a young Oxford don, Charles Edward Cutts Birch Appleton (1841-79), who edited it until his death, converting it in 1871 into a fortnightly and in 1874 into a weekly review. It included M. *Arnold, T H. *Huxley, M. *Pattison, and the classical scholar John Conington (1825-69) among its early contributors. In 1896 it came under the control of Pearl Craigie (`J. O. *Hobbes'); she employed as editor C. Lewis Hind, who gave it a more popular colouring. After various vicissitudes and changes of title the Academy disappeared in the 1920s. ACHEBE, Chinua (1930- ), author, born and educated in Nigeria, where his father taught in a school under the Church Missionary Society. He studied at University College, Ibadan, 1948-53, then worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service in Lagos. One of the most highly regarded of African writers in English, Achebe's reputation was founded on his first four novels, which can be seen as a sequence recreating Africa's journey from tradition to modernity. Things Fall Apart (1958) seems to derive from W. B. *Yeats its vision of history as well as its title; it was followed by No Longer at Ease (1960); Arrow of God (1964), a portrayal of traditional society at the time of its first confrontation with European society (a traditional society recreated in Achebe's novels by the use of Ibo legend and proverb); and A Man of the People (1966), which breaks new ground. Bitterness and disillusion lie just beneath the sparkling satiric surface, and the novel provides further evidence of Achebe's mastery of a wide range of language, from the English of Ibo-speakers and pidgin, to various levels of formal English. Anthills of the Savannah (1987), a novel told in several narrative voices, pursues Achebe's bold, pessimistic, and sardonic analysis of West African politics and corruption in its portrayal of the fate of two friends, one minister of information in the fictitious state of Kangan, the other a poet and radical editor: their resistance to the regime of the country's Sandhust-educated dictator ends in death. Other works include Beware, Soul Brother and Other Poems (1971), The Trouble with Nigeria (1983), and Hopes and Impediments (essays, 1988). He has been emeritus professor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, since 1985. See also POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE. Achitophel, name for the earl of *Shaftesbury in Dryden's * Absalom and Achitophel . ACKER, Kathy (1947-97), novelist, poet, and performance artist, born in New York. On leaving university she worked as stripper and pornographic film actor, these experiences providing material for her first self-published short stories. Her style and subject matter were established in early novels like The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula (1975). Influenced by W. *Burroughs, the poetry of the *Black Mountain school, and the erotic writings of Georges Bataille, she rejected plot and character in favour of fragments of autobiography, plagiarized material, and disconnected dreamlike sequences of explicit sexuality and violence. In the mid-1980s she settled in London, where the UK publication of Blood and Guts in High School (1984) brought her a wide audience, and was followed by Don Quixote (1986), Empire of the Senseless (1988), and In Memoriam to Identity (1990). She returned to the USA to make performance tours of her work. Books from this period include My Mother: Demonology (1995), Pussy, King of the Pirates (1995, also recorded as a CD with punk band the Mekons), Bodies of Work (1997, essays on art, culture, and sexuality), and Eurydice in the Underworld (1997). ACKERLEY, J(oseph) R(andolph) (1896-1967), author, and for many years (1935-59) literary editor of the * Listener , to which he attracted work from such distinguished contributors as E. M. *Forster and *Isherwood. Hindoo Holiday (1932) is based on his experiences as private secretary to an Indian maharaja; My Dog Tulip (1956) and his novel We Think the World of You (1960) both describe his intense relationship with his Alsatian dog. My Father and Myself (1968) is an account of his discovery of his apparently respectable father's extraordinary double life, the other side of which was described by Ackerley's half-sister Diana Petre in The Secret Garden of Roger Ackerley (1975); see also My Sister and Myself: The Diaries of J. R. Ackerley , ed. F. *King (1982). The Ackerley prize for autobiography was established in 1982: the first winner was children's writer, autobiographer, and broadcaster Edward Blishen. ACKERMANN, Rudolph (1764-1834), German lithographer who settled in London and opened a print shop in the Strand in 1795. He played a major role in establishing lithography as a fine art, and published many handsome coloured-plate books with lithographs, hand-coloured aquatints, etc., in association with Prout, A. C. Pugin, *Rowlandson, and other artists. His publications include the Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions , etc. (1809-28); The Microcosm of London (3 vols, 1808-11), an antiquarian and topographical work by W. *Combe; and the gift-book annual Forget-Me-Not , of which the first issue appeared in 1825. Combe's The Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque first appeared as `The Schoolmaster's Tour' in Ackermann's Poetical Magazine (1809-11). ACKLAND, Rodney (1908-91), playwright, greatly admired but considered insufficiently frivolous by West End managements in the 1930s; he has been described as `the English Chekhov', the only playwright of his generation to see how *Chekhov's revolutionary dramatic technique might be joined to the robust native tradition of mixing tragedy with comedy. His best early plays-- Strange Orchestra (1931), After October (1936)--inhabit a world which recalls the seedy bohemian gentility of the novels of J. *Rhys. Birthday (1934) is a study of hypocrisy and repression at work inside a comfortably respectable middle-class family. The Dark River (1941) is a grander and more sombre portrait of England in the shadow of the Second World War. The Pink Room (1952), a tragi-comedy set in the summer of 1945 in a seedy London club (based on the French Club in Soho), was reviewed savagely on its opening but successfully revived at the *National Theatre in 1995 under the title of Absolute Hell , with Judi Dench in the principal role. ACKROYD, Peter (1949- ), novelist, biographer, poet, and reviewer. He had a Catholic upbringing in west London and was educated at St Benedict's School, Ealing, Clare College, Cambridge, and Yale. From 1973 to 1982 he was on the staff of the * Spectator , joining * The Times as its chief book reviewer in 1986. His first published work was a volume of poems, London Lickpenny (1973), republished with another collection, Country Life (1982), in The Diversions of Purley (1987). He has also published two pieces of cultural criticism, Notes for a New Culture (an essay on *Modernism, 1976) and a study of transvestism ( Dressing Up , 1979). His lives of Ezra *Pound (1980), T. S. *Eliot (1984), *Dickens (1990, with curious sections of authorial intervention), *Blake (1995), and Sir T. *More (1998) have been widely praised; but it is as a novelist with a preoccupation with the circular nature of time that Ackroyd has now become best known. All his novels explore, in their various ways, active relationships between the present and the historical past through narratives that subvert the distinction between invention and authenticity. In his first novel, The Great Fire of London (1982), the relationship focuses on a plan to film Dickens's * Little Dorrit . London has continued to loom large in Ackroyd's fiction, both as a physical location (especially its more sinister side) and as a metaphor. His gift for historical reconstruction was demonstrated in The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983), in which *Wilde looks back on his life from his last years of poverty and exile in Paris. Hawksmoor (1985) has Detective Nicholas Hawksmoor (namesake of the 18th-cent. architect *Hawksmoor) investigating a series of murders in London churches that become linked to the rebuilding of the city after the Great Fire of 1666. In Chatterton (1987) a similar historical dynamic is set up, with modern events being related back to the death of the poet Thomas *Chatterton and the marriage of the Victorian writer George *Meredith, while in First Light (1989) an archaeological discovery provides the link between past and present. Ackroyd's blending of genres continued in the visionary autobiography English Music (1992), a series of lyrical dialogues on English culture, and in The House of Dr Dee (1993), in which the central character, Matthew Palmer, inherits an old house in Clerkenwell formerly the residence of the 16th-cent. magician John *Dee. Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994), set in 1880 and centring on a series of grisly murders in the East End of London, brings together the music-hall performer Dan Leno, Charles Babbage (inventor of the Analytical Engine, a proto-computer), and the novelist George *Gissing in a characteristic commingling of genres and narrative voices. Milton in America (1996) is a historical fantasy that transports *Milton to the New World in 1660 in anticipation of the Restoration. Acmeism, a school of Russian poetry, led by *Gumilev and Sergei Gorodetsky, and including among its members *Akhmatova and *Mandelstam. They gathered in a group called the Poets' Guild, organized by Gumilev in Oct. 1911. Their major concerns were the depiction of the concrete world of everyday reality with brevity and clarity and the precise and logical use of the poetic word. They declared themselves opposed to symbolist mysticism and vagueness, and announced their forerunners as Shakespeare, *Villon, *Rabelais, and *Gautier. Acrasia, in Spenser's * Faerie Queene , II. xii, typifies Intemperance. She is captured and bound by Sir *Guyon, and her *Bower of Bliss destroyed. Acres, Bob, a character in Sheridan's * The Rivals . Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes, Touching Matters of the Church , popularly known as the Book of Martyrs , by *Foxe, first published in Latin at Basle 1559, printed in English 1563, with woodcut illustrations.     This enormous work, said to be twice the length of Gibbon's * Decline and Fall , is a history of the Christian Church from the earliest times, with special reference to the sufferings of the Christian martyrs of all ages, but more particularly of the Protestant martyrs of Mary's reign. The book is, in fact, a violent indictment of `the persecutors of God's truth, commonly called papists'. The author is credulous in his acceptance of stories of martyrdom and partisan in their selection. The work is written in a simple, homely style and enlivened by vivid dialogues between the persecutors and their victims. Action française, l', an extreme right-wing political group which flourished in France between 1900 and 1940, monarchist, anti-Semitic, and Roman Catholic. The newspaper L'Action française , its organ, was founded and edited by two literary journalists and polemical writers, Charles Maurras (1868-1952) and Léon Daudet (1867-1942), a son of Alphonse *Daudet. ACTON, Sir Harold Mario Mitchell (1904-94), writer and aesthete, educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. He spent some years in the 1930s in Peking, and wrote several works on Chinese theatre and poetry. He later returned to settle at his family home at La Pietra, near Florence. He published several volumes of poems, including Aquarium (1923) and This Chaos (1930); fiction, which includes a novel set in Peking, Peonies and Ponies (1941), and Tit for Tat and Other Tales (1972, short stories); and historical studies, which include The Last Medici (1932) and The Bourbons of Naples (1956). He also published two volumes of autobiography, Memoirs of an Aesthete (1948) and More Memoirs (1970). ACTON, Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg, first Baron Acton (1834-1902), born at Naples, the son of a Roman Catholic English father and a German aristocrat mother: he was brought up in a well-connected cosmopolitan world and was educated at Paris, Oscott, Edinburgh, and Munich, where he studied under the distinguished German church historian Döllinger. In the Rambler (converted under his direction to the Home and Foreign Review ) he advocated Döllinger's proposed reunion of Christendom, but stopped the Review on the threat of a papal veto. He opposed the definition by the Catholic Church of the dogma of papal infallibility, and published his views in his Letters from Rome on the Council (1870). In 1874, in letters to * The Times , he criticized *Gladstone's pamphlet on `The Vatican Decrees'. His literary activity was great, and took the form of contributions to the North British Review , the * Quarterly Review , and the English Historical Review (which he helped to found), besides lectures and addresses. Lord Acton was appointed Regius professor of modern history at Cambridge in 1895. One of his principal works was the planning of the Cambridge Modern History (1899-1912) for the *Cambridge University Press. Adam, in Shakespeare's * As You Like It , the faithful old servant who accompanies Orlando in exile. Adam, the name given to a 12th-cent. Anglo-Norman play (also called the Jeu d'Adam and the Mystère d'Adam ) in octosyllabics, surviving in one 13th-cent. manuscript from Tours. There are three scenes: the Fall and expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise; Cain and Abel; and a Prophets' Play ( Ordo Prophetarum ). It is generally thought that it was written in England c .1140 (though Bédier doubted it), and it is regarded as important for the evolution of the medieval *mystery plays in England. Although it contains Latin as well as the vernacular, and is enacted with rudimentary staging at the church door, the play is not good evidence for the evolution from liturgical to profane staging, displaying as it does a theatrical sophistication far beyond most of the later mystery plays. There is an English edition, ed. Paul Studer (1918); see also M. D. Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and Its Background (1963), 311-21. Adamastor, (1) in Os Lusíadas (v. li) of *Camões, the spirit of the Cape of Storms (the Cape of Good Hope), who appears to Vasco da Gama and threatens all who dare venture into his seas; (2) the title of a poem by R. *Campbell. Adam Bede, a novel by G. *Eliot, published 1859.     The plot was suggested by a story told to George Eliot by her Methodist aunt Elizabeth Evans of a confession of child-murder made to her by a girl in prison. The action takes place at the close of the 18th cent. Hetty Sorrel, pretty, vain, and self-centred, is the niece of the genial farmer Martin Poyser of Hall Farm. She is loved by Adam Bede, the village carpenter, a young man of dignity and character, but is deluded by the attentions of the young squire, Arthur Donnithorne, and is seduced by him, in spite of Adam's efforts to save her. Arthur breaks off relations with her, and Hetty, broken-hearted, agrees to marry Adam. But before the marriage she discovers she is pregnant, flies from home to seek Arthur, fails to find him, is arrested and convicted of infanticide, and saved from the gallows at the last moment, her sentence commuted to transportation through Arthur's intervention. In prison she is comforted by her cousin Dinah Morris, a Methodist preacher, whose strong, serious, and calm nature is contrasted with hers throughout the novel. In the last chapters, Adam discovers that Dinah loves him; his brother Seth, who had long and hopelessly loved Dinah, resigns her to him with a fine unselfishness.     The novel was immediately acclaimed for its realism, for its picturesque portrayal of rural life, and for its humour; Mrs Poyser was greeted as a comic creation on the level of *Dickens's Sam Weller and Mrs Gamp. Some critics objected to its insistence on the `startling horrors of rustic reality' (* Saturday Review ) and its `obstetric' details. H. *James in 1866 found Hetty Sorrel `the most successful' of George Eliot's female figures. Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough (or Cleugh), and William of Cloudesley, three noted outlaws, as famous for their skill in archery in northern England as *Robin Hood and his fellows in the Midlands. They lived in the forest of Engelwood, not far from Carlisle, and are supposed to have been contemporary with Robin Hood's father. Clym of the Clough is mentioned in Jonson's * The Alchemist , I. ii; and in D'Avenant's * The Wits , II. i. There are ballads on the three outlaws in Percy's * Reliques (Adam Bell) and in *Child's collection. In these, William of Cloudesley, after having been captured by treachery, is rescued by his comrades. They surrender themselves to the king and are pardoned on William's shooting an apple placed on his little son's head. Adam International Review, an irregular periodical of literature and the arts edited by Miron Grindea (1909-95), published originally in Bucharest, and in England since 1941 (No. 152). Contributors have included *Auden, T. S. *Eliot, E. *Sitwell, R. *Graves, and many major European figures. Nos 387-400 (1977) were devoted to a celebration of the *London Library. ADAMOV, Arthur, see Absurd, Theatre of the. Adams, Parson Abraham, a character in Fielding's * Joseph Andrews . ADAMS, Francis (1862-93), novelist, poet, and journalist, born in Malta, and educated at Shrewsbury School and in Paris. He travelled to Australia in 1884 for health reasons (he was tubercular) and worked there successfully as a journalist, while publishing a collection of poems, Songs of the Army of the Night (1888). The Melbournians (1892) is a novella describing social and political life in Australia and the emerging sense of national identity; The Australians (1893) collects articles and essays on similar themes. Adams returned to England in 1890, where he was to commit suicide. His novel, A Child of the Age , was published posthumously in 1894 by John *Lane in the Keynotes Series. It vividly describes the schooldays (at `Glastonbury') and poverty-stricken struggles of would-be poet and scholar, young orphan Bertram Leicester, and is understandably suffused with a fin-de-siècle melancholy. ADAMS, Henry Brooks (1838-1918), American man of letters, and grandson and great-grandson of presidents of the United States. He was born and brought up in Boston and educated at Harvard, and during the Civil War was in England, where his father Charles Francis Adams (1807-86) was a minister. On his return he taught history at Harvard, edited the * North American Review , and, after moving to Washington, published two novels, Democracy (1880, anonymously) and Esther (1884, as `Frances Snow Compton'). His ambitious History of the United States during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison appeared in nine volumes, 1889-91. He subsequently travelled widely in Europe; his Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904) is an interpretation of the spiritual unity of the 13th-cent. mind, which led to his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), which describes the multiplicity of the 20th-cent. mind. In his preface, he invokes the names of *Rousseau and *Franklin as predecessors in the field of autobiography, and proceeds (speaking of himself in the third person) to analyse the failures of his formal education (which he describes as not only useless but harmful), the complexity of the `multiverse' we now inhabit, and the predicament of modern man in an increasingly technological world. In chapter XXV, `The Dynamo and the Virgin', he contrasts the spiritual force that built Chartres with the dynamo--`He began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians had felt the Cross ...'--and proceeds, in the final chapters, to define his own `Dynamic Theory of History' and the acceleration of scientific progress. There are also interesting accounts of his residence in England, and of his `diplomatic education' in the circle of Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and *Gladstone; and a lively description of an encounter (through his friend *Milnes) with *Swinburne, whom he likened to `a tropical bird, high-crested, long-beaked, quick-moving ... a crimson macaw among owls'. ADAMS, Richard (1920- ), children's writer and novelist, born in Berkshire. He is most widely known for his highly successful fantasy Watership Down (1972), an anthropomorphic account of rabbit society, and has also written other works including Shardik (1974) and Plague Dogs (1977). ADAMS, Sarah Flower (1805-48), poet, born in Essex, the daughter of a radical journalist, Benjamin Flower, and brought up as a Unitarian: after her father's death in 1829 she lived for some years in the family circle of W. J. *Fox, to whose Monthly Repository she contributed. She wrote a historical verse drama about martyrdom, Vivia Perpetua (1841), but is remembered as a writer of *hymns, which include `Nearer, my God, to Thee' ( c .1834). adaptation, stage, film, and TV. It was the development of the cinema that made adaptation a commonplace. The early pioneers of film simply trained their cameras on the stage, producing drastically condensed versions or highlights of classic plays. The first film stars were the leading theatrical performers of the day. Shakespeare was a favourite. In 1899 Beerbohm *Tree made a short film of * King John , and the following year Sarah *Bernhardt starred in a three-minute * Hamlet .     Most of the acknowledged landmarks in the early cinema had literary origins. Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903) was based on a stage melodrama that had been performed in New York in 1896. D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) was adapted from The Clansman (1905), a stage play (originally a novel) by Thomas Dixon, in which Griffith had appeared as an actor in 1906. Griffith was credited with creating the language of cinema, but cited the 19th-cent. novel--in particular *Dickens--as his major influence.     With the coming of sound, plays and novels could be reproduced with greater fidelity, but for the best filmmakers were less vehicles of adaptation than points of departure. `What I do is to read a story once,' commented Alfred Hitchcock, `and, if I like the basic idea, I just forget all about the book and start to create cinema.'     The tension between literature and film was at its most acute in the adaptations of the classics. In a review of William Wyler's 1939 version of * Wuthering Heights the critic Dilys Powell regretted a cinema `still beset by people who bring the book with them'. Wyler achieved a polished piece of Hollywood film-making within the constraints of the two-hour feature, but was still criticized for omitting half of the Brontë original.     The advent of television, with the extra scope provided by weekly episodes, offered a more natural medium for faithful adaptation. From * The Forsyte Saga (1967) to such lavish productions as * Middle-march, *Pride and Prejudice , and * Vanity Fair in the 1990s, Britain's strong literary tradition produced in the classic serial an enduring commodity.     As the appeal of adaptation lay in the commercial value of exploiting an established property, it was perhaps inevitable that, by the end of the 20th cent., the theatre should have turned back to the cinema. Long-running musicals were based on the films Sunset Boulevard (1950; Billy Wilder) and Whistle down the Wind (1961). A theatrical version of the classic Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949; adapted from Roy Horniman's novel Israel Rank , pub. 1907) toured Britain to good notices in 1998. Even the French cinema classic Les Enfants du paradis (1944) would be brought--albeit unsuccessfully--to the London stage. The adaptation has come full circle. ADCOCK, (Kareen) Fleur (1934- ), poet and translator, born in New Zealand, and educated partly in England, where she settled in 1963. Her volumes of poetry include The Eye of the Hurricane (1964), High Tide in the Garden (1971), The Inner Harbour (1979), Selected Poems (1983, reissued 1991), a translated selection of medieval Latin poems, The Virgin and the Nightingale (1983), The Incident Book (1986), Time-Zones (1991, with elegies for her father who died in 1987), and Looking Back (1997). Predominantly ironic and domestic in tone, her work suggests wider horizons through her evocations of travel and of varied landscapes, and in recent years she has written about public events (e.g. the fall of communism in Romania) and environmental issues. She edited the Oxford Book of Contemporary New Zealand Poetry (1983) and her translations from the Latin of two *Goliardic poets, Hugh Primas and the Arch Poet , appeared in 1994. ADDISON, Joseph (1672-1719), the son of a dean of Lichfield, educated at Charterhouse with *Steele and at The Queen's College, Oxford, and Magdalen, of which he became a fellow. He was a distinguished classical scholar and attracted the attention of *Dryden by his Latin poems. He travelled on the Continent from 1699 to 1703, and his Dialogues upon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals (published posthumously) were probably written about this time. In 1705 he published The Campaign , a poem in heroic couplets in celebration of the victory of *Blenheim. He was appointed undersecretary of state in 1706, and was MP from 1708 till his death. In 1709 he went to Ireland as chief secretary to Lord Wharton, the lord-lieutenant. He formed a close friendship with *Swift, Steele, and other writers and was a prominent member of the *Kit-Kat Club. Addison lost office on the fall of the Whigs in 1711. Between 1709 and 1711 he contributed a number of papers to Steele's * Tatler and joined with him in the production of the * Spectator in 1711-12. His 18 Spectator essays (5 Jan.-3 May 1712) on Paradise Lost are an important landmark in literary criticism. His *neo-classical tragedy * Cato was produced with much success in 1713, and during the same year he contributed to Steele's periodical the * Guardian and during 1714 to the revived Spectator . His prose comedy The Drummer (1715) proved a failure. On the return of the Whigs to power, Addison was again appointed chief secretary for Ireland, and started his political newspaper the Freeholder (1715-16). In 1716 he became a lord commissioner of trade, and married the countess of Warwick; the marriage was rumoured to be unsuccessful. In 1718 he retired from office with a pension of £1,500. His last year was marked by increasing tension in his friendship with Steele, as several of his papers in the Old Whig bear witness. Addison was buried in Westminster Abbey, and lamented in an elegy by *Tickell. He was satirized by Pope in the character of *`Atticus'.     Addison's prose was acclaimed by Dr *Johnson in his Life (1781) as `the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal, on light occasions not groveling', and Addison himself said, `I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffee-houses.' He admired *Locke and did much to popularize his ideas. He attacked the coarseness of *Restoration literature, and introduced new, essentially middle-class, standards of taste and judgement; Bonamy Dobrée described him as `The First Victorian'. One of his most original and influential contributions to the history of literary taste was his reassessment of the popular ballad, previously neglected as a form, in essays in the Spectator on * Chevy Chase and * The Children in the Wood .     P. A. Smithers, Life of Joseph Addison (1968) and W. Graham, Letters of Joseph Addison (1941) are standard biographical resources. In addition to editions of the Tatler, Spectator , and Guardian , see The Freeholder , ed. J. Lehney (1979). Addison of the North, the, see Mackenzie, H. Adelphi, started in 1923 as a monthly journal under the editorship of J. M. *Murry, intended as a mouthpiece for D. H. *Lawrence and himself. On the verge of folding in 1927, it was resumed (with financial aid from readers) as the New Adelphi , but as a quarterly. Murry's editorship ended with a D. H. Lawrence memorial number in 1930, and the periodical was taken over by Max Plowman and Richard Rees, under the name the Adelphi , incorporating the New Adelphi , which ran until 1955. Contributors to the three series include W. B. *Yeats, T. S. *Eliot, A. *Bennett, H. G. *Wells, *Day-Lewis, *Orwell, and *Auden. ADOMNAN, St ( c .625-704), abbot of Iona from 679, who *Bede says was the author of a work on `The Holy Places' ( Ecclesiastical History , V. 15, 21), and who is also credited with writing an extant life of St *Columba. Adonais, an elegy on the death of *Keats, by P. B. *Shelley, written at Pisa, published 1821.     Composed in 55 Spenserian stanzas, the poem was inspired partly by the Greek elegies of *Bion and *Moschus (both of which Shelley had translated) and partly by Milton's * Lycidas . Keats is lamented under the name of Adonais, the Greek god of beauty and fertility, together with other poets who had died young, such as *Chatterton, *Sidney, and *Lucan. His deathbed is attended by various figures, both allegorical and contemporary, including *Byron `the Pilgrim of Eternity' (st. 30). Shelley, the atheist, accepts the physical facts of death, but insists on some form of Neoplatonic resurrection in the eternal Beauty of the universe, `a portion of the loveliness | Which once he made more lovely' (st. 43). The style is deliberately grand and marmoreal--`a highly wrought piece of art '--and lacks intimacy. Yet Shelley strongly identified himself with Keats's sufferings, and in his preface he attacks the Tory reviewers with a pen `dipped in consuming fire'. The poem ends with astonishing clairvoyance: `my spirit's bark is driven i Far from the shore ...' ADONIS, pen-name of Ali Ahmad Sa'id (1930- ), poet and scholar, born in Syria, and educated at Damascus University; in 1956 he settled in Lebanon, where in 1968 he founded the influential magazine Mawaqif . Many of his poems, which explore classical themes as well as the tragedy of Beirut in the 1980s, have been translated into English, and he has himself translated into Arabic works by *Racine and *Saint-John Perse. Adriana, in Shakespeare's * The Comedy of Errors , the jealous wife of Antipholus of Ephesus. Adriano de Armado, see Armado. Advancement of Learning, The, a treatise by F. *Bacon, published 1605, systematizing his ideas for the reform and renewal of knowledge. Book I has a dual task: to defend knowledge in general from all its enemies, ecclesiastical and secular, and to argue for its dignity and value. Surveying the discredits that learning has brought upon itself, Bacon writes brilliantly satirical accounts of medieval Scholasticism, which restricted intellectual enquiry to the text of *Aristotle, and Renaissance Ciceronianism, with its slavish imitation of *Cicero's style. These and other `diseases' have deflected knowledge from its true goal, `the benefit and use of man'.     Book II then undertakes a `general and faithful perambulation of learning', identifying `what parts thereof lie fresh and waste', not properly developed. Bacon surveys the whole of knowledge, human and divine (that is, theology), under three headings, history, poetry, and philosophy, corresponding to the three faculties of memory, imagination, and reason. The result is a tour de force, showing a remarkably wide grasp of many subjects and a penetrating insight into the kind of research needed to develop them, including original analyses of rhetoric, psychology, ethics, and politics. Bacon's `small globe of the intellectual world', as he called it, has important links with his essays. Adventurer, see Hawkesworth. Adventures of Master F.J., The, by G. *Gascoigne, see F.J. Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World, Showing Who Robbed Him, Who Helped Him, and Who Passed Him by, The , the last complete novel of *Thackeray, serialized in the * Cornhill Magazine Jan. 1861-Aug. 1862, with illustrations by the author and Fred Walker.     The story is told by Arthur Pendennis, now a middle-aged married man. His young friend Philip is the son of a fashionable doctor, George Firmin, who, as `George Brandon', had appeared as the seducer of Caroline Gann in `A Shabby Genteel Story', an unfinished tale published in 1840 in * Fraser's Magazine . Firmin had abandoned Caroline, having tricked her into a false marriage, and then run away with an heiress, Philip's mother, now dead. Firmin is being blackmailed by the disreputable parson Tufton Hunt, who performed the mock marriage ceremony with Caroline Gann and threatens to prove that the marriage was in fact valid. Caroline, calling herself Mrs Brandon, and known affectionately as `the little Sister', is a nurse who has tended Philip through an attack of fever, and now looks on him as her own son. She refuses to give the evidence which will disinherit him. However, Dr Firmin, having lost his own money and Philip's fortune, absconds to America, and Philip's cousin Agnes, daughter of a pretentious toady, Talbot Twysden, breaks off her engagement to Philip. While visiting Pendennis and his family in Boulogne, Philip comes across General Baynes, co-trustee with Dr Firmin of Philip's inheritance. Knowing that Baynes will be ruined by any financial claim on him, Philip does not pursue his legal rights. He falls in love with Baynes's daughter Charlotte, and marries her in spite of her mother's fierce opposition, Thackeray's prejudices against mothers-in-law being here prominently displayed. Philip is struggling to make a living as a journalist, in a manner that recalls Thackeray's own early struggles. A happy ending is achieved through the device of a suddenly rediscovered will, made by Lord Ringwood, Philip's great-uncle. Philip, the only one of the old man's haughty and capricious relatives never to toady to him, has been left a large legacy. Æ, see Russell, G. W. Aeglamour, (1) the *`Sad Shepherd' in Jonson's drama of that name; (2) a character in Shakespeare's * The Two Gentlemen of Verona . aeglogue, see ECLOGUE. ÆLFRIC ( C .955- C .1010) was a monk of Winchester (where he was a pupil of *Æthelwold), Cerne Abbas, and Eynsham near Oxford where tie was abbot. His chief works are the Catholic Homilies (990-2), largely drawn from the church Fathers, and the Lives of the Saints (993-8), a series of sermons also mostly translated from Latin, employing skilfully the idiom of English and the alliteration and metrical organization of Old English poetry. Several other English works of his survive, all with an educational purpose; these include his Latin Grammar (his most popular work in the Middle Ages, judging by the number of manuscripts and by his being called `Grammaticus' in the 17th and 18th cents); his Colloquy between a teacher and pupil on one side and various representatives of walks of life on the other: a ploughman, a shepherd, a hunter, and so on; and a translation of the Heptateuch , the first seven books of the Bible. Ælfric is the most prominent known figure in Old English literature and the greatest prose writer of his time; he is celebrated not only for his stylistic excellence but also for his educational principles and the breadth of his learning as a product of the 10th-cent. Benedictine Revival in England.     Catholic Homilies, First Series (Text) , ed. P. Clemoes (EETS SS 17, 1995); Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection , ed. J. C. Pope (EETS OS 259 and 260, 1967 and 1968); Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, Series 2. Text , ed. M. Godden (EETS SS 5, 1979). ÆLFTHRYTH (Elfrida) ( c .945- C .1000), the daughter of Ordgar, ealdorman of Devon, the second wife of King Edgar and the mother of Ethelred the Unready. She was said to have caused the death of her stepson Edward the Martyr, according to a story that first circulated in the late 11th cent. but for which there seems little evidence. Ælla, an interlude or tragedy by *Chatterton, written in the winter of 1768-9, published 1777. Ælla, Chatterton's major fictitious character (with no historical basis) was introduced first in `Songe toe Ella'; in Ælla he appears as Saxon `warde' of Bristol Castle, newly married to Birtha, whose wedding celebrations are interrupted by news that the Danes have landed, and who is driven to a tragic death by the plotting of Celmonde, his rival in love. The piece is composed mainly in ten-lined stanzas, handled with considerable assurance and virtuosity, and contains one of Chatterton's most admired passages, the song of the minstrels beginning `O! synge untoe mie roundelaie, | O! droppe the brynie teare wythe mee' (ll. 961 ff.). AENEAS SILVIUS PICCOLOMINI, see Piccolomini. Aeneid, The, see Virgil. AESCHYLUS (525-456 BC), the earliest of the three great Athenian tragic poets. He has some claim to be regarded as an inventor of the genre, since, where there had previously been the chorus and only one actor, he introduced a second actor and subordinated choral song to the dialogue. He is noted for the scope and grandeur of his conceptions and style, but only seven of his many plays have survived, three of which form the famous trilogy the * Oresteia ( Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides ), which describes the murder of Agamemnon by his wife and his son's subsequent vengeance. Aeschylus was hardly known in England before T. *Stanley's edition of the plays in 1663. Milton gave some Aeschylean traits to * Samson Agonistes (1671) and in the next century the primitivists John Brown (1725) and William Duff (1770) praised Aeschylus's `irregular greatness, wildness and enthusiasm'; but his true popularity dates from the 19th cent. and centres initially on the play Prometheus Bound . *Byron's `Prometheus' (1816) was followed by Shelley's * Prometheus Unbound (1820), S. T. *Coleridge's essay On the Prometheus of Aeschylus (1825), and a translation of the play (1833) by Elizabeth Barrett (*Browning). Interest in the great cosmic rebel was a feature of the *Romantic movement, but in the second half of the century there was only R. *Browning's outline of the legend in `With Gerard de Lairesse' (1887) and *Bridges's Prometheus the Firegiver (1883). From *Landor on attention shifted rather to the Oresteia and has stayed there in the 20th cent., resulting in *O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (1930), a recasting of the Oresteia in terms suggested by Freudian psychology, and, less obviously, T. S. *Eliot's The Family Reunion (1939). See also Browning's * The Agamemnon of Aeschylus . There have been notable translations by Louis *MacNeice ( Agamemnon , 1936) and T. *Harrison (the Oresteia , 1981). AESOP (6th cent. BC), to whom tradition attributes the authorship of the whole stock of Greek fables, is probably a legendary figure. The fables were orally transmitted for the most part, but some were put into verse by Babrius (3rd cent. AD), while some were translated into Latin by Phaedrus (1st cent. AD) and Avianus (?4th cent. AD). They became known to the West in the Renaissance through the 14th-cent. prose version compiled by the Byzantine scholar Maximus Planudes. *Erasmus produced a Latin edition in 1513 which was then widely used in schools. They were widely imitated and adapted throughout the 18th cent. Richard *Bentley's attack on the antiquity of the `Aesopian' fables in his Dissertations (1697, 1699) was one of the notable contributions to the controversy satirized in Swift's * The Battle of the Books . Aesthetic movement, a movement which blossomed during the 1880s, heavily influenced by the *Pre-Raphaelites, *Ruskin, and *Pater, in which the adoption of sentimental archaism as the ideal of beauty was carried to extravagant lengths and often accompanied by affectation of speech and manner and eccentricity of dress. It and its followers (e.g. *Wilde) were much ridiculed in * Punch , in *Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience (1881), etc. See also ART FOR ART'S SAKE and Grosvenor Gallery. ÆTHELWOLD, St (?908-84), born at Winchester. He entered the monastery of Glastonbury, of which *Dunstan was abbot, and became dean there. He subsequently re-established a monastic house at Abingdon, introducing the strict Benedictine Rule from Fleury, and he was appointed bishop of Winchester (963) after Edgar became king of England and Dunstan archbishop of Canterbury (960). He co-operated with Dunstan and *Oswald in the Benedictine Reforms of his century, expelling the secular clergy from Winchester, Chertsey, Milton, and Ely, and replacing them with monks. He rebuilt the church at Peterborough and built a new cathedral at Winchester. He was an important figure too in the revival of learning, as his pupil *Ælfric testifies; most significantly, he translated the Rule of St Benedict ( c .960), and wrote the Regularis Concordia , the code of the new English rule in the 10th-cent. Revival. Aethiopica, a Greek romance by the 3rd-cent. AD Syrian Heliodorus of Emesa, displays the common characteristics of the genre: the lovers are parted, and there is the usual emphasis on travel through strange lands as they seek each other and on the maintenance of chastity in the face of temptations and dangers. As often happens the intercalated stories have a `realistic' character depicting Greek middle-class life, in sharp contrast to the romantic adventures that dominate the main narrative. The Aethiopica was printed in 1534 and became widely known through *Amyot's French translation (1547) and *Underdowne's English version (1569), and its influence on the romantic novels of the next half-century was considerable: Sidney's * Arcadia , *Barclay's Argenis , *d'Urfé's L'Astrée are all indebted to it. Affectionate Shepheard, The, see Barnfield. Agamemnon of Aeschylus, The, a translation by R. *Browning, published 1877. It aroused controversy because of its uncompromising literalness, which Browning defended strongly in his preface, along with his spelling of Greek names (`Olumpos' for `Olympus', etc.). The translation (or `transcription', as Browning termed it) may be taken as an attack on the Hellenism of, e.g., M. *Arnold; by making his own version `literally' unreadable, Browning countered Arnold's claim that the Greeks were masters of the `grand style'. Agape, in Spenser's * Faerie Queene , IV. ii. 41, the Fay, mother of Priamond, Diamond, and Triamond, who, seeking to obtain for her children from the Fates     Long life, thereby did more prolong their paine. The word in Greek means affection, charity. (Continues...)

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Library Journal Review

The esteemed, 75-year-old Oxford Companion to English Literature (OCEL), long a reference classic, forms the cornerstone of the foundation on which the ever-expanding edifice of the "Oxford Companion" series rests. Like its predecessors, this revised sixth edition, first published in 2000, contains accurate, up-to-date entries-8500 in all, approximately 200 of them new. These entries, unsigned and ranging in length from a few to more than 2000 words each, cover authors, literary movements and terms, critical theories, genres, publishers, plot summaries, and characters. Drabble's new revision includes numerous additions and deletions, ensuring the standing of OCEL into the 21st century. The additions come from a continuing effort to update the content by including more entries on women and postcolonial writers and on critical theory. To make room for the newer content, some material has been cut: the "general knowledge" entries, coverage of artists and musicians, some entries on characters, entries for individual works of prolific classical authors, and some cross references. What remains is the best available one-volume reference on English literature, not literature in English (though many literatures and authors in languages other than English are treated in the context of English literature). The appendixes include a detailed chronology of English literature from 1000 to 2005 and a historical list of poets laureate and literary awards. Bottom Line Careful selection is so obvious here that citing some of the unavoidable absences seems churlish. The writing is good, even stylish. While still aimed primarily at general readers, this volume offers comprehensive scope and rigorous treatment, making it useful to scholars, students, and journalists as well as to the libraries-large and small, academic and public-serving them. Only libraries on tight budgets holding the fifth or original sixth edition might want to wait for the arrival of a seventh. Highly recommended.-Paul D'Alessandro, Portland P.L., ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

School Library Journal Review

Gr 8 Up-This revision of the sixth edition adds material but not pages. The chronology, awards lists, and entries include works published through 2005, but entries from the previous edition have not been revised; the last case of Internet censorship cited is from 1999. Of the 16 two-page essays on various genres, only 2 have been given slight alterations ("Children's Literature" has lost its condescending conclusion). This edition contains more information on female and ethnically diverse writers. There are some omissions; for example, Alan Furst is left out of the "Spy Fiction" essay, and Martin McDonagh (The Beauty Queen of Leenane) earns only one sentence, in "Irish playwrights, new." "Gay and lesbian literature," which is no longer a separate essay, fails to mention several significant works, though they are treated elsewhere. Altogether absent from the book are authors such as W. G. Sebald, David Mitchell, and Ismail Kadare. Some choices are puzzling: Denise Levertov has twice Richard Wilbur's space; readers are told how to pronounce "Carew," but not "Bewick" (or Coetzee, Milosz, etc.). Flashes of wit-on "horror": "for every King there are a dozen or more knaves"-and verve ("Lads' literature"), leaven the learning. This is still the title to heft if you need elegant plot summaries, or help with anaphora, isocolon, and their ilk. However, for most purposes the previous edition still suffices.-Patricia D. Lothrop, St. George's School, Newport, RI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

This is a "revised" version of the 5th edition (1985) of a favorite reference warhorse. Entries for contemporary authors have been thoroughly updated (see Anthony Burgess), as have original 1985 entries (for instance, LeFaye's edition of Chapman's Jane Austen letters is mentioned). Completely new articles for 59 individuals have been added, among them Monica Dickens, P.D. James, Martin Amis, W. Robertson Davies, Paul Theroux, and Gore Vidal. Major changes have been made in the appendix; gone are detailed articles "Censorship and the Law of the Press," "Notes on the History of English Copyright," and the wonderful calendar tables giving regnal years, explaining the mysteries of 1752, and giving dates of moveable feasts and saints' days. Included instead are a useful (for unprepared or forgetful readers) chronology, 1000 to 1994, that cites major works, authors, and reigning monarchs; lists of British poets laureate; winners of the Nobel and Booker prizes; and the Library Association Carnegie medalists. Most academic and public libraries will want this revision for its new entries and revisions. Those on starvation budgets may comfortably postpone purchase until a sixth edition appears. A. F. Dalbey; College of Marin

Booklist Review

The publication of the first Oxford Companion to English Literature (OCEL) in 1932 marked the beginning of the Oxford Companion series. Drabble, the noted British novelist and biographer, was responsible for the substantially revised fifth edition, published in 1985, and she also coedited the 1987 abridged version, The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature, which contained some additions and corrections to the parent volume. In this revision of the fifth edition, Drabble has added 59 new entries on contemporary writers; updated previous entries on twentieth-century authors to reflect new publications, deaths, and other events; and corrected many of the errors noted by reviewers of the 1985 volume. Moreover, she has dropped the three appendixes relating to censorship, copyright, and the calendar and inserted in their place an extensive chronological chart tracing English literature from Anglo-Saxon times through 1994, a list of British poets laureate, and lists of recipients of the Nobel, Pulitzer, and Booker prizes and the Carnegie Medal. Interestingly, a number of articles that were added to the concise version (e.g., Foreign Influences, Parody) do not appear in this revision. Whereas the fifth edition excluded authors born after 1939, Drabble obviously has now abandoned this policy since the subjects of many of the new entries (e.g., Martin Amis, Penelope Lively, Salman Rushdie) were born after 1940. In addition, she has expanded coverage of English-language writers outside Great Britain by adding such figures as Peter Carey, Robertson Davies, Janet Frame, and Toni Morrison. Her continued exclusion of a writer of the prominence of Eudora Welty is difficult to understand, particularly in light of the lengthy new article on Gore Vidal. In most cases, articles on living authors have been revised through 1994, and in some instances, entries note even 1995 publications, such as Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled. A few other articles also have been updated (e.g., the article on The Oxford English Dictionary now mentions the second edition and the CD-ROM version, and the entry for the Listener notes its cessation in 1991). However, some other entries also could use revision. For instance, Cambridge University Press indicates that "a history of American literature is planned," when, in fact, two volumes have already been published. Also, references from Calendar and Censorship to the now non-existent appendixes have not been deleted. With more than 9,000 entries, the OCEL is a veritable cornucopia of information pertaining to British literature. While it includes a number of entries on major Commonwealth, European, and American authors, its primary focus continues to be the literature and culture of the British Isles. In this regard, it is significantly different from the Cambridge Guide to Literature in English [RBB Ap 1 94], which has considerably fewer entries but offers better coverage of the English-language literatures of Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India, the Caribbean, Canada, and the U.S. However, the OCEL treats many more minor British authors and their works, individuals who have influenced English literature, and literary characters and allusions. Although the overlap between these two works is substantial, the differences are sufficient that most libraries will want both volumes. (Reviewed January 1 & 15, 1996)