A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors: Living and Deceased, from the Earliest Accounts to the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century. Containing Over Forty-six Thousand Articles (authors), with Forty Indexes of Subjects

Samuel Austin Allibone compiled this monumental reference work during the mid-nineteenth century, driven by an ambitious desire to create a comprehensive bibliographic guide to English-language literature. Published in three volumes between 1858 and 1871, the dictionary served as an essential resource for scholars and librarians of the Victorian era, offering biographical and critical notes on over forty-six thousand authors from the earliest periods of English history through the nineteenth century.

The dictionary is noted for its exhaustive scope and painstaking attention to detail, a reflection of Allibone's commitment to lexicography and literary history. While modern scholarship has superseded its critical assessments, the work remains a significant artifact of nineteenth-century intellectual effort, praised at the time of its release as an indispensable tool for navigating the vast and rapidly expanding corpus of British and American writing.