For nearly half a century, James D. Hart's Oxford Companion to American Literature has offered a matchless guided tour through American literary culture, both past and present. Hart now presents the first abridgement of the Companion in a paperback edition, making the entries of the greatest general interest from the original volume available to a much wider audience.
Compact and affordable, The Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature contains over 2,000 entries, including brief biographies of important authors, plot summaries of individual works, descriptions of important...

Do you approve of censoring the works of great writers? Some might contend that to bowdlerize a great writer's work would be to diminish its overall quality. Others, like Thomas Bowdler, whose eraser danced over every Shakespeare play, would argue that all modest people should be able to read a great work without blushing. For attacking the classics, Mr. Bowdler has been immortalized as the world's best-known, self-appointed literary censor. And because of his efforts the term bowdlerize has become eponymous with his name. Alternatively, the word bikini--defined as a two-piece bathing suit...

Printed music and writing about music involve the use of complex systems of notation and a wealth of technical terms in several languages. The Oxford Dictionary of Musical Terms provides clear, succinct, definitions of a comprehensive range of the musical terms, in English and other European languages, that are likely to be encountered in Western music, including in jazz and popular musical genres.
Over 2,500 A-Z entries range across a spectrum of subjects, among them: rhythm, meter, forms, genres, pitch, scales, chords, harmony and counterpoint, notational systems, composition and...

The Celts were one of the great founding civilizations of Europe and the first North European people to emerge into recorded history, producing a vibrant labyrinth of mythological tales and sagas that have influenced the literary traditions of Europe and the world.
The first A-Z reference of its kind, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology is fascinating and accessible guide to the gods and goddesses, the heroes and heroines, the magical weapons, fabulous beasts, and otherworld entities that populate the myths of this rich European culture. Like A Dictionary of Irish Mythology before it, this is...

A Dictionary of Chemical Engineering is one of the latest additions to the market leading Oxford Paperback Reference series. In over 3,400 concise and authoritative A to Z entries, it provides definitions and explanations for chemical engineering terms in areas including: materials, energy balances, reactions, separations, sustainability, safety, and ethics. The dictionary also covers many pertinent terms from the fields of chemistry, physics, biology, and mathematics.
Useful entry-level web links are listed and regularly updated on a dedicated companion website to expand the coverage of...

The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar is a straightforward and accessible A-Z guide of the diverse and often complex terminology of English grammar. It contains over 1,600 entries with clear and concise definitions, enhanced by numerous sample sentences, as well as relevant quotations from the scholarly literature of the field.
This second edition is written and edited by Professor Bas Aarts of University College London, writer of the acclaimed Oxford Modern English Grammar. It has been fully revised and updated, with particular attention paid to refreshing the sample sentences...

The third edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics is an authoritative and invaluable reference source covering every aspect of the wide-ranging field of linguistics. In 3,250 entries this dictionary spans grammar, phonetics, semantics, languages (spoken and written), dialects, and sociolinguistics. Clear examples - and diagrams where appropriate - help to convey the meanings of even the most technical terms. It also incorporates entries on key scholars of linguistics, both ancient and modern, summarizing their specialisms and achievements.
With existing entries thoroughly...

This wide-ranging, jargon-free dictionary contains over 2,300 entries on all aspects of statistics, including terms used in computing, mathematics, and probability. It also includes biographical information on over 200 key figures in the field and coverage of statistical journals and societies. While embracing the whole multi-disciplinary spectrum of this complex subject, information is presented in a clear and practical manner. This edition features recommended web links for many entries, accessible via the Dictionary of Statistics website, which provide valuable extra information.
This...

Containing over 6,000 entries from Aalto to Zwinger and written in a clear and concise style, this authoritative dictionary covers architectural history in detail, from ancient times to the present day. It also includes concise biographies of hundreds of architects from history (excluding living persons), from Sir Francis Bacon and Imhotep to Liang Ssu-ch'eng and Francis Inigo Thomas. The text is complemented by over 260 beautiful and meticulous line drawings, labelled cross-sections, and diagrams. These include precise drawings of typical building features, making it easy for readers to...

The bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms provides clear and concise definitions of the most troublesome literary terms, from abjection to zeugma. It is an essential reference tool for students of literature in any language. Now expanded and in its fourth edition, it includes increased coverage of new terms from modern critical and theoretical movements, such as feminism, schools of American poetry, Spanish verse forms, life writing, and crime fiction.
It includes extensive coverage of traditional drama, versification, rhetoric, and...