Oxford for Company, Cambridge to Guide

Call it, if you like, the Battle of the Two Margarets: Drabble took the field first, with the 1985 fifth edition of “The Oxford Companion to English Literature”; enter now Atwood, with the late 1988 first edition of “The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English.” Actually, Margaret Atwood only contributes the foreword to the Cambridge book, which has been edited by Ian Ousby; Margaret Drabble is Oxford’s Ousby. But call it the Battle of the Two Margarets anyway.

Now then, which Margaret wins?

Let the two thick volumes fall open to the middle. They are about the same size. Cambridge’s 1,109 pages are fewer but a bit larger than Oxford’s 1,155. Both, for the record, are bound well enough and printed on good enough paper that they do indeed fall open and lie quietly at the page the reader is consulting. On this last point, Cambridge gets the nod, but not by much.

With both books open in the middle, try a few sample mid-book entries in Cambridge:

-- Le Guin, Ursula, the distinguished author of “anthropological” science fiction, resident in Northern California: 36 lines.

-- Le Sueur, Meridel, the early radical feminist writer, who began in New York, living in a commune with Emma Goldman, but did some of her most important writing in Hollywood: 28 lines.

-- Magic Realism, a school of writing mainly identified with South American writers, above all with Gabriel Garcia Marquez: 80 lines.

-- Malouf, David, one of Australia’s most serious novelists and poets: 43 lines.

-- Maltz, Albert, the late playwright and screenwriter, whom many would call the most talented of the Hollywood 10: 20 lines.

-- Mamet, David, younger American playwright, author of “American Buffalo” and other works: 14 lines.

What does Oxford have to say of these? With the exception of Magic Realism, a phrase it says was coined by Franz Roh in 1925 for an exhibit of post-Expressionist German art and only later used to characterize a current in Latin American literature, Oxford has no entries on any of these.

And yet, from the same middle section, one may easily compile a list of Oxford entries unmatched by Cambridge, among them: Maeterlinck, Maimonides and Mandelstam.

How to explain this difference? Oxford is the revision of the original “Companion,” edited by Sir Paul Harvey in 1932. Margaret Drabble explains a key regard in which she continues Harvey’s approach:

“The coverage of foreign authors has been dictated largely by Harvey’s own criterion; they are included ‘as matter of allusion in English, not on any scale of merit which would satisfy students of those literatures.’ A few have made their way on merit alone, but most have been treated in the context of English literature. In the entries for American authors, emphasis has been placed on Anglo-American connections and responses: The selection for contemporary American authors has been partly guided by British appraisals, which sometimes differ considerably from those current in the United States, although indisputably major figures have been included as a matter of course. There has been no attempt to provide comprehensive coverage of Commonwealth literature, although many individual new entries have been added.”

It is important to note that this criterion dictates not just exclusions but also inclusions, such as that of Maeterlinck, Maimonides and Mandelstam, none of whom is from England, America or the Commonwealth.

The Cambridge approach is strikingly different, as editor Ian Ousby explains:

“This volume aims to provide a handy reference guide to the literature in English produced by all the various English-speaking cultures. Its scope thus extends beyond the United Kingdom and Ireland to represent also the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India and the Caribbean. . . . Because of this very broad range, it has been necessary to restrict the consideration of non-English literature which sometimes creeps into such guides.” Or as Margaret Atwood a bit more exuberantly puts it: “Perhaps we should say ‘the English languages,’ since, being a viral organism, English has mutated, producing many variants which share its main characteristics but which have diverged to become species recognizable in their own right. Thus novels by, for instance, William Faulkner, Chinua Achebe or Anita Desai may contain words and even grammatical constructions which are foreign to readers from the British Isles; American English may sound strange to an Australian, West Indian English to a Canadian; yet each of these ‘Englishes’ can be read by any English speaker, who, by virtue of common ground, is in a position to make at least an educated guess at understanding.”

The Battle of the Two Margarets is thus a draw. For the reading of the literature that was written in English during the centuries when the influence of other European literatures on English writers vastly exceeded that of other literatures in English, Oxford is a boon companion. For the reading of the literature that is being and will be written in the newer, non-European English-speaking cultures, Cambridge is an indispensable and indeed a path-breaking guide. Oxford, at $35, is a bargain. Cambridge, at $39.50--not a new edition but a completely new work--is an even better bargain. Buy both, or at the very least, insist that your local library do so.