Amazon.com description: Product Description: This comprehensive four-volume set is an ideal reference for the study of British literature's rich history. Four authoritative A-to-Z volumes cover approximately 1,400 major British writers - primarily dramatists, poets, essayists, and fiction writers - of the 16th through the 20th centuries, with an emphasis on those who are part of the high school curriculum. Entries are organized into a highly readable format that includes a biographical sketch, a synopsis of the writer's major works, and a brief bibliography. Providing essential information on the challenging writers of this period, "Encyclopedia of British Writers: 16th-20th Centuries" is a valuable addition to any high school classroom or library. "British Writers: 16th and 17th Centuries" Volume 1 covers the English Renaissance, with entries on Shakespeare and other major Elizabethan writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Sir Philip Sidney, and more. Also profiled are writers of the early 17th century, including John Milton and metaphysical poets such as John Donne, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, and others. "British Writers: 18th Century" This volume covers the Restoration period and the Age of Reason, with entries on such writers as Alexander Pope, John Dryden, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Robert Burns, and many others. "British Writers: 19th Century" Volume 3 covers the writers of the 19th century, profiling such influential figures as Jane Austen, Robert Browning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Keats, Bram Stoker, Alfred Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, Oscar Wilde, and William Wordsworth. "British Writers: 20th Century" This volume profiles British writers of the 20th century, with entries on such significant authors as W. H. Auden, Samuel Beckett, Roald Dahl, E. M. Forster, Graham Greene, Kazuo Ishiguro, James Joyce, C. S. Lewis, Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Salman Rushdie, Tom Stoppard, Dylan Thomas, Evelyn Waugh, and Virginia Woolf.