The Literary Encyclopedia is an online reference work first published in October 2000. It offers both freely available content and content and services for subscribers. Articles are written by "nearly 2000 named scholars, most of whom are current university teachers" It contains writer profiles as well as entries on literary terms and individual works of literature in the English language. It also includes articles on ancillary disciplines such as history or philosophy as they pertain to literature and literary history.
The encyclopedia's founding editors were Robert Clark, (University of East Anglia), Emory Elliott (University of California at Riverside) and Janet Todd (University of Glasgow).
Written and owned by "a global network of scholars and researchers", The Literary Encyclopedia is an ongoing project. One of its features is a series of lists of recommended scholarly reading. It contains over 8 million words in more than 4,000 articles..