At first glance A Guide to English Literature may seem to be no more than a short bibliography of English literature with perhaps rather more extensive-and certainly more outspoken-comments on the principal editions, commentaries, biographies, and critical works than bibliographies usually provide. But it is something more: this guide contains long "inter-chapters" that provide reinterpretations of the principal periods of English literature in the light of modern research, as well as two final sections summarizing in unusual detail the literary criticism that exists in English and recent scholarship in the fi eld. Th e purpose of this book, then, is to provide the reader with convenient access to a disciplined study of the texts themselves.