English Language and Literature 

Go to the stacks and browse around the area where the original title is shelved - you just might find other materials on the same subject!

Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth Century English Fiction
Drexel Library Book Shelves (2nd floor)  PR858.S615 H8 1990    
This work explores the waves of social change that were overtaking English culture in the early 18th century, and places pre-novel writing of the time within such shifts, as well as discussing the rise of the novel.

The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth Century Novel  (in Cambridge Collections Online)
This collection of essays charts the development of the novel in the eighteenth century with discussions of the most important writers of the time: Swift, Richardson, Defoe, Fielding, Sterne, etc. Chapters also include a discussion of women writers, and popular culture and Gothic fiction.

Britannia's Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to Ossian
Drexel Library Book Shelves (2nd floor) PR461 .C597 1999   
This book discusses the formation of a British identity in the context of literary production in the late 17th and early 18th century.

Prose in the Age of Poets: Romanticism and Biographical Narrative from Johnson to DeQuincey
Drexel Library Book Shelves (2nd floor) PR778.B56C34 1990   
Chapters in this volume are devoted to Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt and Thomas DeQuincey, but the essays discuss other important literary figures, particularly poets, alongside these writers in trying to trace the development of biography alongside the development of prose writing.

The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism  (in Cambridge Collections Online)
The essays that make up this collection represent "a reassessment, a rethinking, of essential terms" that have occupied scholars about the period (quoted from the book's Preface).

The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel  (in Cambridge Collections Online)
This book contains a collection of eleven essays written by some of the most prominent Victorian literature scholars. Chapters cover topics on reader and publishing culture, aesthetic aspects of the novel, as well as such cultural issues as race and sexuality.

The Victorian Novel
Drexel Library Book Shelves (2nd floor) PR871.H67 1990        
This volume is divided into chapters devoted to particular writers: Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Trollope and Meredith are all devoted a chapter, as are minor literary figures. A good bibliography for each chapter might direct readers further.

A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture
Drexel Library Book Shelves (2nd floor) PR461 .C597 1999        
This volume collects essays on particular themes of Victorian life and their representation in literature, written by prominent Victorian scholars. Sections of the volume include Passages of Life, with chapters on Childhood, Adolescence, Walks of Life, etc., including discussions of different professional categories, and kinds of writing.