Author Description

Based on the critically acclaimed Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, this second concise edition has been fully updated by editor William Toye. The revised entries include books published up to 2010, in addition to 42 new entries that discuss such notable figures as Joseph Boyden, Yann Martel, Miriam Toews, Michael Crummey, and Lisa Moore.With over 900 entries, this indispensible reference book covers major writers, significant works, awards, genre surveys, and other aspects of the Canadian literary scene, past and present. Toye discusses recent publications from a critical perspective, offering insight and meaning to the literary works that shape our national literature.Toye's Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature (1997), upon which the concise edition is based, was lauded as a landmark publication, was a Globe and Mail bestseller, and selected as a Quill & Quire book of the year. The first concise version retained all significant entries (in addition to 60 new entries), omitting entries on regional and genre surveys, as well as francophone writers not published in English.The second edition of The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature remains an indispensible supplement to its distinguished predecessors.