The Cassell Dictionary of Italian Literature includes some 400 entries on major and minor Italian writers from the twelfth century to the present day; on Italian metrics and poetic forms or genres; and on literary or critical schools, periods, problems and movements. In addition there are specific entries on Italian Literature, Film and art, as well as feminism, post-modernism and other topics of contemporary interest.

Thumb-indexed edition It takes its dignified place in the Cassell series, that fountainhead and model of "modern lexicography," said "Le Lingue del Mondo," "The compilers have given an excellent working tool to the English and ourselves." This entirely new dictionary is designed as a mirror of contemporary Italian life but it includes obsolete words and phrases which are recurrent in the works of classic Italian writers for the benefit of readers and students of Italian literature.