| Editorial | 2 | |
| Esse Matters | ||
| President’s Column: The Information Society | Helmut Bonheim | 4 |
| ESSE/5 | 6 | |
| ESSE Bursaries | 7 | |
| The New Seminar System at ESSE | Catherine Belsey | 8 |
| News from the Board | 10 | |
| Patricia Shaw: In Memoriam | 11 | |
| Writing Literary History | ||
| The Climates of Literary History: Past, Present, Future | Jonathan Bate | 12 |
| Writing The Short Oxford History of English Literature | Andrew Sanders | 21 |
| Writing The Routledge History of Literature in English | Ronald Carter & John McRae | 25 |
| Articles, poems, and an interview | ||
| A Tribute to E. P. Thompson | Fred Inglis | 28 |
| Four Poems | E. P. Thompson | 29 |
| Interview with Max Stafford-Clark | Paulo Eduardo Carvalho | 33 |
| A Place for Children’s Literature in English Studies | Peter Hollindale | 40 |
| Grendelle: Beowulf’s Dead Mother | Christina Dokou | 44 |
| Revaluations | ||
| F. R. Leavis | Terry Eagleton | 49 |
| Reviews | ||
| African-American English (with Checklist) | John Holm | 53 |
| Bibliography on CD-Rom | Margarita Chourova & Christo Stamenov | 56 |
| Make your own bibliography | Martin A. Kayman | 58 |
| New Shadwell edition | Aspasia Velissariou | 60 |
| New Writing | Russell West | 62 |
| Publishing in Brief | Robert Clark | 64 |
| Computing | ||
| Computer Corner | Adam Piette | 66 |
| Computers and New Technologies in Language Learning | Dieter Wolff | 69 |
| Rejoinder | ||
| The Role of Language Studies in Editing Shakespeare | Andreas Fischer | 72 |
| Reports | ||
| International Medieval Congress | David Palliser | 76 |
| English Historical Linguistics | Deborah Collier & Christina Lee | 77 |
| 70 Years of Anglo-American Studies in Bulgaria | Michael Hattaway | 78 |
| New Literatures in English | Susanne Muhleisen | 80 |
| Centres, Projects & Queries | 82 | |
| Listings | ||
| Conference Announcements | 86 | |
| Journals | 92 | |
| ESSE Board Members | 96 |