Featuring over 200 key thinkers, both major and less well-known, and spanning three centuries, this is a comprehensive survey of early Shi'ite literature. For each figure, the author offers a summary of their life and achievements, before continuing to outline their literary and scholarly contributions to the canon, and documenting all sources for their writings, even those long-since vanished. Each entry includes information on further reading for the figure in question, in addition to detailed footnotes and a full bibliography.