650 authors in portrait. Anyone who has made a name for themselves as an English-speaking writer can find the most important information about their works and contributions here: from the early Middle Ages to the immediate present. Beyond the well-known canon, the lexicon presents many authors from the global reach of 'New English Literatures' and contemporary writers. Among those represented are Bacon, Shakespeare, Defoe, Fielding, Swift, Jane Austen, Byron, Dickens, Keats, Christie, T.S. Eliot, Huxley, Orwell, Wallace, Virginia Woolf, Golding, Hornby, Doris Lessing, McEwan, Rowling, and Tolkien. Beckett, Joyce, Shaw, and many others represent Irish literature. Additionally, the portraits include Naipaul, Rushdie, Atwood, Ondaatje, Achebe, Coetzee, Gordimer, Carey, Mansfield, and many more.