The following articles result from a workshop organized at NIAS (Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar, The Netherlands), 17–21 November 2010. They reflect on the (im)possibilities of writing a European Literary History within the framework of a World History of Literature, a massive project undertaken under the auspices of the Stockholm Collegium, a group of scholars originally gathered at Stockholm University, in the context of a project on literary history funded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences. The expected outcome of the entire project is a four-volume World History of Literature to be published by Blackwell.