Information for Contributors

1. Content and Style – General Considerations

The Literary Encyclopedia aims to serve as an authoritative reference work suitable for use by students, researchers, and scholars in the field of literary and cultural studies, as well as by all others interested in authoritative discussions on literary and cultural history.

The pedagogic and scholarly aims of The Literary Encyclopedia are:

• To cater for higher-education teaching and research needs by providing scholarly biographies of writers and other relevant persons, informed analyses of major and minor works in all literatures of the world, and descriptive or critical essays on relevant literary, cultural and historical topics and events.
• To provide this information in a user-friendly and feature-rich digital platform that facilitates intellectual understanding of the relations between texts, lives, and historical context, for example by generating article groups, bookshelves, sophisticated search procedures, and dynamic timelines.
• To develop critical awareness of history and theory in the construction of cultural representations.

Entries should therefore be scholarly, written with the highest of professional standards, yet strive to be of interest to a wider intellectual audience.

Authors should try to structure the entry so as to organize their ideas into common threads. Since we are mainly a reference work, our articles need to find the optimal balance between descriptive content (so that users can find basic information) and wider critical interpretation and analysis. Thus, chronological-biographical description should always be supplemented by an understanding of how contemporaries responded to the person being described, and how the person and his/her work have been considered by later generations.

All entries should be critical and not hagiographical. Authors should strive to minimize the use of jargon, and introduce technical terms in plain or previously defined language.

The sources of all quotations should be clearly identified. In addition, authors should avoid reference to unpublished or inaccessible materials.

Entries should be, as far as possible, neutral analyses that offer a broad perspective of the author, work or topic discussed. They should aim to survey existent critical views, and provide a balanced approach to these. Authors should see their mission as that of introducing undergraduates, graduate students and colleagues, who may have no special knowledge of the author or topic, to the main issues and the most important pieces of primary and secondary literature, so as to enhance their insight and understanding of the matters discussed. Clarity of substance and style should therefore be one of the most important goals.

2. Types of Content and Specific Guidelines for Different kinds of Articles

The Literary Encyclopedia currently publishes the following kinds of content:

• About People
  • Biographical profiles
  • Lifelines – day-by-day chronologies of an author’s life
• About Works
  • Profiles – descriptive-critical analyses
  • Primary bibliography of all major works by all writers listed (using a workslist template)
• About Literary and Cultural Context
  • Essays on genres, concepts, movements, theories; comparative and reception essays; essays on important historical events, movements and issues
• Secondary Bibliography
  • Annotated or unannotated recommended reading for any of the above.

Main articles in The Literary Encyclopedia are divided into three databases: People, Works, and Context.

• People – critical-biographical profiles of mainly writers, but also philosophers, scientists, artists, historical figures, and others of note.
• Works – descriptive, interpretive and critical analyses of (mainly) literary works, but also of philosophical, scientific, and historical writings, which are indexed by date, genre and country. Many works are listed for bibliographical purposes, as part of an author’s ‘list of works’, but we aim to eventually publish articles on all major works, as well as on any of particular specialist interest.
• Context – this database includes major essays of up to 5000 words on literary/ cultural context and historical context

1. ‘People’ Articles
2. ‘Works’ Articles
3. ‘Context’ Articles

‘People’ Articles

Profiles of people should begin with a summary outline of the main achievements of a life. This summary should be seen as to a degree free-standing, so that if can be called into view by those seeking rapid information and who are not yet subscribers to the Encyclopedia (first 60 words are free to view by all).

The rest of the entry should be more or less in the following form:

1. Birth, early life, parentage, social class, race if significant; larger social context
2. Evolution of mature life, mentioning key works and their reception, closing with death (if deceased).
3. One or more paragraphs discussing history of later reputation (if it has not been thought best to include this in the foregoing)
4. Critical interpretations, reviews (if contemporary figure), anything else you feel will throw useful light on the profile.

We are very much in favour of quoting the words of our subjects as this helps to give a sense of actuality to any account.

All major works by an author will be listed separately in the Works section, and the software will make complete publication lists available to readers. Major works should, of course, be mentioned in the context of the life, but it is not necessary to mention all minor works in the entry itself. Where works are mentioned, publication or composition dates should be given in brackets.

When agreeing to write a People entry, the contributor often wishes to write some profiles of the major works by that person. In this case, please let the editors know as soon as possible if there are any works you would like to cover.

In case the list of works present in our database is not complete, or if there is no such list of works present, we ask contributors of the ‘people’ profile to provide a list of works by the author on a ‘workslist’ template which can be found at https://www.litencyc.com/php/members/contributors/docs/documents/workslisttemplate.doc after you log in.

‘Works’ Articles

We do not have hard and fast rules about how an article should be written, and prefer to give relatively free rein to our contributors’ own insights, style and compositional preferences. However, we encourage our contributors to follow a structured format, including most (if not all) of the aspects below:

• an introductory paragraph about the importance of the work today (where relevant)
• context of writing – biographical and cultural. This could also include a discussion of its use of genre and any generic peculiarities (where relevant)
• précis of narrative and description of major characters, plot, themes (where narrative is involved); major arguments if a philosophical or political work; to whom addressed etc.
• reception on publication – i.e. the contemporary relevance of the work (influence, reception, esteem)
• summary of notable examples of recent critical reading (later and current understanding of the value of the work; any other pertinent issues of critical interpretation)

Where there are several titles by an author which tend much in the same direction, we will make separate records for date purposes, but summarise the set in one of the records. For example, Ruskin's Modern Painters appears in five volumes 1843-1860. These volumes might best be summarised in a long article under the first volume, the other volumes being recorded in the Works table, but directing the reader to consult the article under the first volume. The same strategy can be used for series of narratives (such as trilogies, for instance), or short but highly important works which the contributor wishes to record in the Works table for historical reasons, but which might receive more effective commentary in one long summary article than in many small comments.

In the case of poetry, we can either have a longer entry on a writer’s whole poetic oeuvre (with the status of a 1* ranked context essay), or several entries focused on particularly well-known, highly studied and anthologised poems or volumes of poetry.

‘Context’ Articles

As the name suggests, a Context essay is designed to develop matters of a critical, interpretive, or comparative nature. Any such essay should give sufficient factual information to enable an uninformed intelligent reader to appreciate what is involved, but this would only be the starting point of a more extended discussion. The essays in this database are divided into ‘literary/ cultural context essays’ and ‘historical context essays’. Some examples of the types of matter that such an essay could cover are the following:

Terminological and conceptual entries: entries on literary (including poetic), philosophical, historical, critical theory and other specialist terminology relevant for literary debates and interpretations (psychoanalysis, ecocriticism, politics etc.) – for some good examples of essays, see, for instance, ‘Hegemony’, ‘Picturesque’, ‘Interpretation’, ‘Binary Oppositions’, ‘Estrangement Effect’, ‘Heteroglossia’, ‘Intertextuality’, ‘Mimesis’ etc.

Essays on larger cultural / literary / philosophical / artistic movements, trends, practices, prizes – in most cases, these will need to be longer (up to 5000-8000 words). For particularly good examples, see ‘Baroque’, ‘Beat Generation’, ‘Bloomsbury Group’, ‘Futurism’, ‘The French Avant-Garde’, ‘Comedia - Early Modern / Golden Age Spanish Theatre’, ‘The Abbey Theatre / The Irish National Theatre’, ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, ‘Nominalism’, ‘Platonism, Neo-Platonism, Neoplatonism’, ‘The Scriblerus Club’, ‘Professional Authorship in Britain 1870-1918’, ‘British Poetry of World War One’, ‘The Newbery Medal’, ‘Textual Scholarship’.

Contextual essays of a historical nature – such as, for instance, ‘Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire’, ‘Middle Ages’, ‘Chartism’, ‘French and Indian Wars’, ‘Black Power’, ‘American Civil War’, Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis’, ‘Glorious Revolution’, ‘Reign of King William III’, ‘War of the Spanish Succession’, ‘French Revolution’.

Comparative and Intercultural Essays – see, for instance, ‘Byronism’, ‘Cervantes in German Literature’, ‘Dante's Reception in the English-speaking World’, ‘Contemporary Greek Novel’, ‘Dreams in European Literature’, ‘Contemporary Romanian Cinema’

3. Length and Ranking of Articles

Ranking articles is necessary so that users can customise the display of researched information. For example, one user might want to see all entries in a small historical period, another might want to list only major entries across a century. The editors have given an initial rank as a starting point for discussion and reserve the right to make the final judgement, but clearly we will be swayed by the contributor’s views.

The rank to which an article belongs is in most cases logically related to the length of article. Please do not assign disproportionate ranks to the people, works or topics you are writing on, but guide yourself by considerations of canonicity, frequency of teaching in undergraduate programmes, importance in world literature, impact in history etc.

The table shows the different ranks and corresponding word counts.

Length of Entries: The above division is a guideline only, and because we are not printing on paper we do not have to be too rigorous about the boundaries. Contributors may write more if they feel it is justified, and with major writers who had long and productive lives, or with major topics, this may be necessary. The same is true for very long works, or works on which a substantial amount of critical material has been written, which needs to be briefly surveyed and commented on. However, the editors will be inclined to suggest cuts if they consider the bounds are needlessly or widely exceeded. The following considerations are in play:

1*

Our implied reader is a highly intelligent and demanding undergraduate student.

2*

We believe such readers wish for essays which take no more than half an hour to read, preferably less.

It is therefore very important to have well-structured essays which can be read fast. Where appropriate (in those cases where the article is a complex literary, cultural or historical essay on movements, trends, concepts, etc., and therefore comparatively longer), we encourage authors to organize the entries by sub-headings.

4. Metadata and indexing of articles

Metadata is "data about data", which helps users to find entries in database systems. This includes details such as an author’s country of birth and activity, a work’s country of publication, the country where an event or movement occurred, or countries involved in the event; dates of life/ activity/ composition/ occurrence (for an event or movement); genres (added to titles of works); activities (added to ‘people’ entries profiled – from novelist or poet, to bishop, politician, revolutionary, financier, patron, musician, physicist etc., a vast database of human activities are being covered by our metadata indexing system); cultural identities (added to people entries, when the person is known to belong to a recognisable cultural, racial or sexual minority – i.e. African American, French Canadian, Jewish, Gay& Lesbian, Black British etc.; a full list of the labels used in the Encyclopedia is available for downloading in the MyLE Account, the Submissions Forms and Company Reports section (accessible after logging in) – see 'Contribution Management: Guides and Submission Forms', Download Article Submission Forms.

Each type of article has a particular set of metadata associated with it, and our submission form asks our contributors to fill the relevant sections in as much detail and as accurately as they can. Our metadata is displayed in the left card of every Encyclopedia record, whether that record has an article associated with it or it is a stub.

5. Formal Matters: Citations, Referencing, Notes, and Punctuation

The Literary Encyclopedia generally follows the MLA referencing format, with references inserted parenthetically inside the article (author surname and publication date, with page number(s) if necessary, to be placed either after the quotation or at the end of sentence, whichever is tidiest), and a list of references or works cited at the end of the article, in this format: Surname, Forename. Title. Place: Publisher, Date.

Provided that the referencing used is consistent throughout, we are happy to accept other referencing styles such as MHRA, and Chicago, where the citations are provided in-text, parenthetically, with a list of works cited at the end.

Any list of supplementary bibliography which is not directly cited in the text should be included in a separate list of 'Recommended Reading' which can be submitted either at the same time with the article, or after the article has been successfully reviewed and published. Please see under Point 7 below.

For classical or foreign-language works, we are happy to include lists of crucial editions and/or translations of the text(s) in question at the end of the article, preceding the list of works cited. Please see under Point 6 below.

Please do not use footnotes and/or endnotes. Any supplementary contextual information should be included in the text of the article whenever possible. If the explanation or note is too extensive, and cannot be incorporated into the text of the article itself, it is possible to signal it inline within parentheses, thus: (see note 1) and list them at the end, in numerical order, before the references/ works cited. Such notes should be used sparsely.

For citing dramatic texts and other sections, please follow this model:

• Act 2 Scene 2 (in preference to Act Two)
• 4.2. acceptable as short form
• Chapter 5, not chapter 5, but "in the second chapter"

Citing other LE Entries: Sometimes an author will wish to cite another LE entry in text, as opposed to just linking other LE entries in the Related Articles section. (For example, if an author quotes a passage from another LE entry.) Proper citation of LE entries in the list of References should follow our general citation guidelines. For instance, to cite the article on “Octavio Paz” by Tom Boll, you would list it as follows:

Boll, Tom. "Octavio Paz". The Literary Encyclopedia. 15 September 2020. URL = <https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3512>

Quotations and Punctuation: please use double inverted commas for quotes shorter than 40 words; longer quotes should be set off in a separate paragraph and indented on the left side. For quotes within quotes, use single inverted commas. Please keep commas and full stops outside quotation marks, thus: “text”, OR “text” (except where such closing punctuation is part of the matter quoted). When a quotation is included in the body of the text, place the full stop after the parenthetical reference, thus: “quote quote” (Author, year, pg. no). If the quotation is set off (longer quotes, over 40 words), the parenthetical reference should come after the full stop:

Quotation quotation quotation quotation quotation quotation quotation. (Author, Year or Title, p. no)

Titles of Works: Titles of short stories, individual poems and essays should be given in double quotes (unless they have been published as a separate text in their own right, in which case they should be counted as a book). Titles of books, films and other larger artistic works should be given in italics (without quote marks).

6. Foreign language Material

We take great pride in our focus on developing world literature and publishing articles on the widest variety of quality writing that has been produced around the world. Our software can deal successfully with any diacritical signs in any language based on the Latin script. For languages which are not based on a Latin script, please include any words, titles or quotations in the language of original composition as transliterated versions.

We expect our authors to submit their articles directly in English, since we do not provide in-house translation facilities. However, if a contributor is not entirely confident in their ability to write the article directly in English, and wishes to use the services of a translator or proofreader, they are entitled to do so. All translators of articles will be acknowledged as such, and their name and affiliation displayed alongside the name of the author at the top of the published article. They will also benefit from free access to the Encyclopedia. However, we do not yet have a remuneration system for translators, which is why we encourage the submission of articles directly in English (this may change in the future as the Encyclopedia grows).

For all foreign authors and works, please include all references to titles in the original language of composition first, followed by a translation of the title into English. If an official translation is available, please provide it, together with the year of translation if available or relevant. If the title has not yet been translated into English, please provide your own translation.

La Peau de Chagrin [The Wild Ass’s Skin] (existing translation; title in English in italics)

Wołanie do Yeti [Calling out to Yeti] (not yet translated; title in English not in italics)

For European languages of wide circulation, we are happy to include quotations in the original language of composition, as long as they are followed by an English translation. In all other cases, please provide quotations in English only – if there is an English edition of the work quoted from, please use the official translation; if a translation is not available, please provide your own, and indicate this in the text as ‘author’s translation’.

Editions, Translations, Commentaries

For Classical Literatures: Please list any editions, translations and commentaries separately from the other works cited, at the end of the article, before the list of critical references.

For Foreign Language Literatures: If you wish, you may include a separate list of translations/ editions available in English before the works cited, at the end of the article.

All bibliographical material consulted (but not directly cited) that you want to include with your article should be listed under the ‘Recommended Reading’ section (see point 7.)

7. Additional Material to be included with Articles

We encourage our authors to make full use of our cross-linking facilities, and use the commands available to them in the left card, under the ‘Contributor Actions’ section.

Recommended Reading: When you submit an article to your editor, or after the article has been published, please add a few recommended readings (books, book chapters, articles, other highly relevant printed material) that should be consulted as further critical material. The 'recommended readings' app is located in the left card of the published articles, under 'Editor/Contributor Functions' --> 'Contributor Actions'. If you have difficulty using the application, or do not have the time, please consider sending a word document list with the titles you wish to add to our assistant editor, Dr Jessica Gossling .

The purpose of the Recommended Reading section is to guide students to the most interesting books, essays, and articles about the subject of the essay to which they are attached, so please be judicious in the choice of material you include. The list is not designed to be a full scholarly bibliography but rather a selective one (5-10 pieces of secondary reading as a guideline) and these texts should be briefly annotated with descriptions of their content. We would suggest a general length of between 50 and 250 words, but sometimes it is enough to only write a brief evaluative sentence (even 1-2 lines can make a difference to readers interested in finding out appropriate material).

In some cases it will be necessary to list works which cannot be annotated – for example when listing useful historical accounts of a period – but we would generally discourage listing many unannotated items. Our readers, and our subscribers, wish for quality direction, not mere book lists.

In the case of foreign literature, it is important to remember that a lot of specialist material will not be readily available in libraries outside the country of origin of that literature, so please refrain from providing an exhaustive list of non-English critical material. We do realise that in some cases (minor literatures; somewhat dated writers/ works) it will not be easy to find relevant critical material in English. However, priority must be given to available material published in English; only key works/ books/ articles in foreign languages should be listed in the recommended bibliography (those likely to be readily available and easy to consult), and a brief annotation provided for them.

Online resources: Please include any useful websites directly relevant to the article you have authored. It is important that you take the time to make sure that the site does not include any illegal or offensive material which could damage the reputation of the Encyclopedia by association. Please only include links which are free to access (no links to articles in journals which require subscription etc.).

Suitable sites include, but are not limited to: the homepages of any learned societies devoted to a person, work or topic; historical resources; e-texts; links pages; book reviews; bibliographies etc. Please include a brief description of the resources available on the site to aid us with our indexing.

Please use the ‘Add Recommended Readings/Web Resources’ function in the left card of the article, under ‘Contributor Actions’, to add any web resources you wish. You can add relevant web resources to other articles in the Encyclopedia, not only the ones you have authored yourself.

Author Chronologies: We are interested in publishing detailed individual chronologies for highly canonical writers. These are designed to reveal the cultural milieu of each author and allow one writer's life to be compared with up to two others. Each chronology comprises 200-400 biographical events, day-by-day, month-by-month. These are shown within the context of historical events happening in the same period of time as that of the author's life.

If a contributor is interested in providing such a chronology, or has a graduate student working on a particular author, who could compile such a chronology, please contact your editor or the managing editor at admin@litencyc.com. A chronology template and guidelines for compiling it can be found here: Author Chronology Guide and Author Chronology Template

8. Submission Procedures

Please use the appropriate submission form to provide the relevant contextual information, including the indexing metadata, about the author, the work or the context article you are submitting:

In most cases, the article will have been commissioned by a specialist editor. Please send the completed submission form to your editor as an email attachment, and also copy in the central editorial office at admin@litencyc.com.

9. Revision of Articles

Because the Literary Encyclopedia is designed to be a dynamic reference work, authors are responsible for maintaining and periodically updating their entries. Specifically, authors are expected to: 1. update their entries regularly, especially in response to important new research on the topic of the entry, and 2. revise their entries in light of any valid criticism they receive, whether it comes from the subject editors on our Editorial Board, other members of the profession, or interested readers. In connection with 1, authors should update the Recommended Reading and the Web Resources sections of their entries regularly, to keep pace with significant new publications, both in print and online.

In the case of contemporary authors, editors should be alerted of any new title published by the author, so that it is included in the database. Likewise, if an author has deceased, we need to be informed of this matter, and the author profile revised accordingly. If important new publications affect the currency of the main text, then the main text should be altered so as to reflect the important ideas in the new research.

Articles which require revision but whose authors do not respond to our requests for revising their articles, or decline such revision, may be withdrawn from the Encyclopedia at the discretion of the Editorial Board and recommissioned.

All minor revisions can be implemented swiftly by contacting the general editorial admin at admin@litencyc.com. Corrections and revisions must be clearly indicated in a word document containing the original text, by highlighting all changes requested, or using ‘track changes’. If necessary, and for clarification, explicative notes on the margin/ comments, can also be added. The central admin board will implement these changes in the online publishing interface. Such minor revisions will not be indicated in the final citation of the entry at the bottom of the article.

All major revisions, where more than a paragraph of new text is added, or there are extensive and significant changes to the original, will require a re-publication of the article (including an editorial review process etc.).The author of the revisions can be the same as the original author of the article, or can be a different contributor (in which case the byline will clearly indicate that the article was originally written by “X”, then revised by “Y). In both cases, the final citation of the entry will add an indication that the article has been revised, together with the date of revision.

10. Remuneration

As set out in the formal Agreement which has governed the publication since 1998 (accessible for viewing from the Contributors section of the MyLE Account), all contributions to The Literary Encyclopedia earn rights to equity, dividends, and royalties. Allocation of rights to equity, dividends and royalties is calculated by producing a Contributor’s Fund which comprises 70% of the rights, and then calculating an Editors’ Fund comprising 20% of the rights. The logic of this division is to balance the contribution of writing and the contribution of editing and allied activities. 10% of the Profits goes into an Investors' Fund, which pays dividends to the initial investor in respect of the risk incurred in providing £35,000 of capital investment in the Company.

In other words, for every entry you write for the Encyclopedia, you will receive shares in any potential profits made by the project. Your allocation will normally be calculated in relation to the rank of the entry, not the number of words you submit to us.

Material published in The Literary Encyclopedia is distinguished by Editors into eight categories/ ranks as set out in the table below. Each category has an appropriate allowance of shares in the royalties payable by the publication.

Royalties are usually disbursed once a year, usually in in November/December, for all articles published before the current calendar year (so, for instance, in November/December 2019 authors have earned royalties for all articles published before 31 December 2018).

The following notes will clarify how payments are calculated and made.

1. Each contributor has a shareholder’s portal on the site which displays their royalty entitlement for each year, based on their contributions published by the census date of 31st December for the year in question. From this site the contributor can generate a statement of earnings which includes a statement of WHT deducted by the Company: MyLE Account.
2. For each contributor we have (usually) an academic institutional address [or, failing that, a personal address], with which their LE account is identified. For those contributors and editors who have opted to receive the royalties due to them, we also have a Paypal-linked email address (which may or may not be the same as their primary email address). Royalty payments are made via PayPal to a PayPal account identified by that email address, or, if the contributor wishes, are paid into our Scholarship Fund which provides research grants for early-career academics, and prizes for scholarly works in literary studies.
3. We also have a country of residence field for each contributor which allows the app to calculate the amount of WHT we should deduct.

In order to see your contributor-shareholder statement, and/ or to make a choice regarding any royalties you may earn (you can choose to receive them, or to donate them to the Scholarship Fund run by the Encyclopedia, which awards two travel grants per year to early-career researchers), you need to log in and visit your MyLE Account/ user area.