Salem Press

	This set is suited toward high-school, public, and academic libraries. Adult readers of all ages curious to expand their reading horizons or to consult this set for their reference needs will find it a pleasure. Highly recommended.

Booklist - American Library Association - Booklist is ALA's official review source for current materials worthy of consideration for purchase by small and medium-sized public and school libraries. The full text of Booklist's starred review of Magill's Survey of World Literature is reproduced below.

July 2009

Magill's Survey of World Literature. Kellman, Steven G. (Editor) Feb 2009. 3,000 p. Salem, hardcover, $499.00. (9781587654312). 809.

This outstanding set is a revision of the 1993 Marshall Cavendish publication of the same name and its 1995 supplement. The 380 writers included are 87 more than in the previous edition and are said to be, in a publisher’s note, “at the heart of literary studies for middle and high school students and at the center of book discussions among library patrons.” New additions include Douglas Adams, Roberto Bolaño, Laura Esquivel, Gao Xingjian, Seamus Heaney, Haruki Murakami, J. K. Rowling, and Zadie Smith. Although there are entries as well for other contemporary authors, the tendency is much more toward canonical and classic authors going back to Aeschylus and Sappho. Relatively few of these authors are regularly studied or read for pleasure by high-school students, and fewer still by middle-schoolers. Nevertheless, these are authors who are worth knowing, and dipping into these volumes at random might make almost any avid reader want to dig deeper. The set makes a fine companion to Magill’s Survey of American Literature (2006). There is a very small overlap, in that each survey includes some Canadian authors.

A typical entry begins with the author’s vital statistics, a one-sentence summing up of his or her importance, and, frequently, a photograph or other form of portrait. This is followed by sections on biography; analysis; critical surveys of one to four works (many with small, black-and-white book jacket illustrations); bibliographies of works by and about the author; and discussion topics. The generous bibliographies are often subdivided. Thomas Bernhard’s works, for instance, are listed under long fiction, short fiction, poetry, drama, screenplays, and nonfiction. Shakespeare is given short shrift, being represented only by the two parts of Henry IV, As You Like It, Hamlet, The Tempest, and Sonnets (but the bibliography gives a complete list of the plays, with dates). Matsuo Bash comes off much better, with seven of his haiku discussed (three in some detail). It is very helpful that pronunciations are almost always given at the beginning of the biographical section. Likewise, it is very helpful that technical terms (such as ottava rima and in medias res in the entry on Luis de Camões) are often defined at the point of use. Volume 6 also includes a glossary of literary terms, category list (primarily genres), geographical list, title index, and author index. This set is suited toward high-school, public, and academic libraries. Adult readers of all ages curious to expand their reading horizons or to consult this set for their reference needs will find it a pleasure. Highly recommended.

- Craig Bunch