Ousby, Ian, ed. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Entries cover writers, individual works, literary groups or schools, wider literary movements, critical schools, literary genres, forms of poetry or fiction, critical concepts, rhetorical terms, theatres, etc. The Cambridge History of English Literature. Provides the full, basic history of English literature through the 19th Century, via essays by scholars on specific topics.
Last volume is a general cross-index.
Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism. Lengthy excerpts from noteworthy critical works. Includes sketches of approximately 100,000 author's lives, both living and deceased. Writers in fiction, general non-fiction, poetry, drama, television, etc., are included in this ongoing series. The Gale Group, various dates.