Dictionary of Literary Characters

Gr 9 Up—These more than 40,000 annotations about figures from classic, pop, and genre fiction; short stories; and plays cover myriad periods, places, and languages. Ancient and modern titles are included, with personages drawn from beloved works (Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) and little-known titles (his Sylvia and Bruno). Some authors are represented by only one character while others are covered much more extensively-183 characters are listed from Charles Dickens's The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, for example. Ranging from a few words to 19 lines, entries are arranged by character surname or, if unnamed, by the work in which he or she appears. The concise, accessible annotations note relevant book titles and the characters' relationship to others in the stories and often explain their significance to the plot, which provides information and contextualization. Novels and plays are not differentiated by genre, making it difficult for readers who are unfamiliar with specific works to distinguish between them. Also, though the alphabetical "List of Authors, Titles, and Characters Included" and separate "List of Titles" are useful, there are no guide words in them to aid access. Readers may question some selections. For instance, Andre Dubus III is included but his father is not, and more characters from Shakespeare's "Cymbeline" than from "Macbeth" are listed. Despite these minor problems, this work displaces Benjamin Franklin's Dictionary of American Literary Characters (1990) and John R. Greenfield's Dictionary of British Literary Characters: 18th- and 19th-Century Novels (1993) and Dictionary of British Literary Characters: 20th-Century Novels (1994, all Facts On File), which focus solely on novels. A valuable addition to large collections.—Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, The Naples Players, FL