The long-established and highly respected narrative bibliography The Year's Work in English Studies represents a rich resource for scholars in all fields of English and literary study. Each of the 75 existing volumes (appearing annually from 1919 to the present) offers a unique and comprehensive account of the best work in a particular field of study for a given year. Now Blackwell Publishers present special editions of these important documents, the English Association Critical Bibliographies. The value of the special editions lies in the re-formatting and collation of the vast amount of data currently available in the 75 annual volumes. The material has been collated into topic-based volumes dealing with a specific period, subject or major author as documented over a number of years. Where formerly all references to American Literature, for instance, would have to have been researched from a collection spanning three-quarters of a century, everything published in this area can now be accessed directly in the special edition boxed set, saving valuable time and research resources. The result is a reference series that provides specialists in a specific literary field with a tailor-made account of his or her area of study.

The English Association Critical Bibliographies also make an important contribution to our cultural history. The volumes offer a unique insight into the way the study and teaching of literature over the century has been institutionalized, transformed and by whom. In the current climate of cultural dispute, scholars are given a chance in these volumes to address the question as to how and why literary study has evolved as it has.

Bibliographical coverage of English Language Studies started in 1940, with a survey of general works (for 1939 and 1940) by no less a name than Dorothy Whitelock, beginning, appropriately, with a review of a book called English in the Future. It continues, revealing the reality of that future, down to 1994 and ninety pages of reviews by a team of scholars from universities across Britain and Europe (writing on History of English Linguistics; Dialectology and Sociolinguistics, including Creolistics; Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics; Morphology; Syntax; Onomastics; and Stylistics).