The Literary Encyclopedia . . .

[Denis Salter]

Dear Colleagues,



The Literary Encyclopedia was founded in 1998 and first published in 2000. Its aim is to provide high quality scholarly reference information on all literary work of interest in the English-speaking world. The publication now comes around the top of Google rankings for resources on English literature and is very widely read and respected. Its use has risen very positively in the last few years and we currently have over 240,000 individual visitors per month who view around 800,000 pages.  We expect a minimum of 3 million individual visits and 9 million page-views in 2005, confirming our standing as one of the most widely consulted and respected websites in our field. 

 

The Literary Encyclopedia is edited by a distinguished international board and published by The Literary Dictionary Company which acts a holding company on behalf of the Encyclopedia's editors and contributors, all of whom will share in its profits and equity value. This equity structure enables us to develop without incurring vast overheads and to pursue scholarly and educational objectives free of the usual commercial pressures, albeit we do intend to generate a respectable income for our editors and contributors by the end of 2006. 

 

Our business plan involves supplying basic entries freely to users and generating revenue from a mixture of subscriptions, publishers' advertising and book sales. Our "Bookshop" -- about to be rebranded as The Literary Bookshop -- currently integrates 3200 works published by Cambridge University Press, Ashgate and the British Library with the Encyclopedia entries with a refinement not seen in any other publication. We are in the process of adding titles published by Northcote House, McFarland (USA), Routledge, Taylor and Francis, and Faber & Faber, and are seeking relations with other publishers. We have also licensed our data to EBSCO, the major US data supplier, for the new Literary Resource Centre they will launch this year. This will do much to enhance our public standing and will also generate a useful revenue. Later this year we will add a literary-academic news magazine called The Literary Magazine which will make The Literary Encyclopedia a very lively point of intervention in contemporary culture. 

 

Our entries range from 100 to 2500 words and comprise biographies of authors, philosophers and others who have made a significant contribution to world culture, critical profiles of texts, or articles on literary terms, movements and historical events. The latter are particularly valuable as they can be called into relation with People and Works entries through user-defined timelines. The Literary Encyclopedia should therefore enhance students' abilities to understand literary contexts. To date our cadre of writers and co-owners extends to over 1000 colleagues who have between them completed nearly 2800 entries. We have 600 entries commissioned for delivery this year, and in total have basic records on over 5,500 writers and nearly 17,000 works. The publication is therefore already a uniquely valuable resource for displaying primary bibliographical lists of authors and works. We have also listed some 1400 topics which we are progressively writing up. 

 

The Literary Encyclopedia is also linked to www.University-English.com, an evolving set of databases which provide contact information for all university departments of English, scholarly journals and other agencies of interest to our profession. University-English assures us of very direct relations with all students and scholars throughout the world. 



Searches can be done by the names of playwrights, organising their works by date or title; or by the titles of plays, organising them by playwright name or date.  There are both Simple and Advanced search modes.  The lists of plays and playwrights are conveniently divided into Major Figures and All Figures. It is possible to bring up a list of other writers and their works (not only playwrights, but those who have written in various genres)  that have relevance to the work of a given playwright: this is an especially useful contextualsing tool.  Links are provided for many playwrights: to sites that hold their papers (for example, the University of Calgary); to the Playwrights Guild of Canada website; to the catalogues of their publisher(s); to the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia website; to websites kept by playwrights on their works or kept by people on their behalf; and to other materials of interest, such as important online articles about the playwrights. 

So far, there are 108 playwrights listed; profiles have been written for many of these; other profiles are in train; and of course new contributors are being sought.



The website address for The Literary Encyclopedia is www.LitEncyc.com



The Canadian editors in charge of the Canadian drama entries are Professors Glen Nichols at the University of Moncton and Denis Salter at McGill University.  If you are interested in contributing to the Encyclopedia, please contact Glen Nichols at Nicholsg at umoncton.ca or Denis Salter at Denis.Salter at McGill.ca.  The Canadian editor in charge of the Canadian non-dramatic entries is Professor Wendy Roy.  Her email is wendy.roy at usask.ca

If you are interested in contributing an article to The Literary Magazine, you should email the Chief Editor of the Encyclopedia, Professor Robert Clark, at RobertClark at LitEncyc.com





--Denis Salter

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"To celebrate this award, and the work it recognizes of those around the world, let me recall the words
of Gandhi: My life is my message. Also, plant a tree."--Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel 
Peace Prize.

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" . . . and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: 
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
 Isaiah 2.4
___________________
Denis Salter
Professor of Theatre
McGill University
853 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, QC
H3A 2T6
Tel (514) 398 6550
Fax (514) 398 8146
d.salter at videotron.ca
denis.salter at mcgill.ca
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