This volume is one of an expanding literary reference work of encyclopaedic dimensions which aims to provide critical introductions to the works, lives, and thoughts of the writers who have shaped the cultural heritage of the western world. This edition extends coverage with 23 essays on novelists, poets, philosophers, historians and playwrights, who have come to the fore in the period 1950-1980 and who are now regarded as indispensible to the literary scene. The list comprises: Samuel Beckett, Edward Bond, Anthony Burgess, Lawrence Durrell, John Fowles, William Golding, Graham Greene, Ted Hughes, Arthur Koestler, Philip Larkin, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, V.S.Naipaul, John Osbourne, Harold Pinter, Paul Scott, Peter Shaffer, Muriel Spark, Tom Stoppard, David Storey, Dylan Thomas, Patrick White and Angus Wilson.