Oxford Companions is a book series published by Oxford University Press, providing general knowledge within a specific area. The first book published in the series was The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1932), compiled by the retired diplomat Sir Paul Harvey.
The series has included (in alphabetical order):
The Oxford Companion to Music is a music reference book in the series of Oxford Companions produced by the Oxford University Press. It was originally conceived and written by Percy Scholes and published in 1938. Since then, it has undergone two distinct rewritings: one by Denis Arnold, in 1983, and the latest edition by Alison Latham in 2002. It is "arguably the most successful book on music ever produced" (Wright, p. 99).
Thomas Burns McArthur (23 August 1938 – 30 March 2020) was a Scottish linguist, lexicographer, and the founding editor of English Today. Among the many books he wrote and edited, he is best known for the Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English (the first thematic monolingual learner's dictionary, which complemented the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English by bringing together sets of words with related meanings); Worlds of Reference; and the Oxford Guide to World English (2002, paperback 2003).
McArthur's most notable work was The Oxford Companion to the English Language (1992), a 1200-page work with 95 contributors and 70 consultants. It was hailed by The Guardian as a "leviathan of accessible scholarship" and was listed on the Sunday Times bestseller list. He published an abridged edition in 1996 and a concise edition in 1998. A second edition was published in 2018, co-edited with Jacqueline Lam McArthur and Lise Fontaine.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature, first published in 1932, edited by the retired diplomat Sir Paul Harvey (1869–1948), was the earliest of the Oxford Companions to appear. It is currently in its seventh edition (2009), edited by Dinah Birch. The work, which has been periodically updated, includes biographies of prominent historical and leading contemporary writers in the English language, entries on major works, "allusions which may be encountered", significant (serial) publications and literary clubs. Writers in other languages are included when they have affected the Anglophone world. The Companion achieved "classic status" with the expanded fifth edition edited by novelist and scholar Margaret Drabble, and the book was often referred to as "The Drabble".
Harvey's entries concerning Sir Walter Scott, much admired by Drabble in the introduction to the fifth edition, were reduced in the sixth edition, for reasons of space.
Sir Henry Paul Harvey KCMG CB (born Durant; 1 October 1869 – 30 December 1948) was a British diplomat and editor of literary reference works. He compiled The Oxford Companion to English Literature (1932), the first of the Oxford Companions series.