Literary Research Guide: An Annotated Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies

James L. Harner's Literary Research Guide, which Choice calls "the standard guide in the field," evaluates important reference materials in English studies. Since the publication of the first edition in 1989, tens of thousands of students and educators have used the Guide as an aid to scholarly research. Harner has added entries describing resources published since 1997 and has revised nearly half the entries from the third edition. The fourth edition contains more than 1,200 entries, which discuss an additional 1,494 books, articles, and electronic resources and cite 729 reviews. New entries reflect the expansion of literary study into emerging fields (gay, lesbian, and transgendered studies and postcolonial theory); this edition also lists reliable Web sites sponsored by academic institutions and learned societies. The annotations describe the type of work, its scope, its major limitations, and its organization present parts of a typical entry in the work list the type and number of indexes evaluate coverage, organization, and accuracy explain the work's uses in research cite significant reviews that more fully define the importance or uses of the work or its place in the scholarly tradition note related works, including supplementary, complementary, or superseded ones not accorded separate entries in the Guide The Guide concludes with name, title, and subject indexes.

James L. Harner is the Samuel Rhea Gammon Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University, College Station.