Male animal at the front of English book (4)
I believe the answer is:
tome
'book' is the definition.
(a tome is a book)
'male animal at the front of english' is the wordplay.
'male animal' becomes 'tom' (male cat).
'at the front of' indicates taking the first letters (I've seen 'at the front' mean this).
The first letter of 'english' is 'e'.
'tom'+'e'='TOME'
(Other definitions for tome that I've seen before include "Large scholarly volume" , "Large and scholarly book" , "A hefty book" , "Big book" , "Large heavy book" .)