The Literary Encyclopedia – anyone know anything about it?
By Paul Biba
I was trying to get some information about a book called “The Roman Traitor” by Henry William Herbert, which I had downloaded from Blackmask, and ran across a reference to the above on-line encyclopedia, whose “Scope” I reproduce below. It is by subscription only, which is a relatively modest US$ 19/year. Before I subscribe I thought I’d check with our readership and see if anyone knew anything about it. It really looks like a useful resource.
The Literary Encyclopedia provides biographical information about major literary, cultural, philosophical and historical figures; descriptive profiles of major cultural works, introductory coverage of the relevant historical contexts and guidance to valuable secondary reading.
In statistical terms, The Literary Encyclopedia currently comprises over 10m words in 6360 completed articles of c. 2-2500 words (2154 author biographies, 2335 works, 1854 topics, of which about 900 are short notes on historical events) and increases by 60-70 new articles each month. The Literary Encyclopedia also lists 24,000 primary works (primarily literature, but also philosophy and other publications of major importance) and nearly 10,000 literary, political and cultural events.
The Literary Encyclopedia is a dynamic community of more than 2200 scholars who collaborate in maintaining and developing the publication and whose scholarly investment ensures that this publication represents the latest understanding of the literatures it covers
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