Chambers Biographical Dictionary Contains all the information you normally need about some famous person. Chambers Words, Backwords, etc. etc. Chambers put a computer to work to produce these. They do not include every word in the most recent edition of Chambers. If you have a computer, then programs like Ross Beresford's TEA do everything these books do and more.
Words sorts words alphabetically in groups of the same length.
The next two add category information not so easy to find elsewhere. Fiction File lists works of fiction by Author, Title, and major characters. This has many lists of words in categories often used in puzzles, including the odd spelling habits of Shakespeare and Spenser, words often pinched from foreign languages, minerals listed by colour, etc. etc. There are similar books by Jeremy Howard-Williams and Anne Bradford which are more easily available at the moment, though I don't own either of them. It contains information about advanced as well as standard cryptics, a good selection of sample puzzles, and advice about writing puzzles too.