Who Wrote That?

Strangely mis-titled paperback. Not, as you might expect, a dictionary of 'great works' more a 'Bluffer's Guide to Eng. Lit.' being a collection of conversational, irreverent biographies of 32 of the great names in the canon from Cha'ucer to Hemingway via Shakespeare, Pope, Austen, Keats, GBS, Kipling and most of the others you could name. Illustrated throughout with cartoons with the most execrable jokes imaginable - e.g. Chaucer: 'Dad's got me a job as a page - one day I might be a book,' and one crew-cut convict to another whilst long-haired Wilde looks on: 'Prison food's so awful, it can make you feel queer.' You'll either love it or hate it but with the new insistence on Pre-20th-century Lit. at GCSE it could well prove an entertaining intro to writers your average 15-year-old wouldn't touch with a barge-pole.