The only full-fledged, genuine quantum theory of gravity we have (and most likely, the only one that is possible for mathematical reasons) is string/M-theory so textbooks of string/M-theory represent the only canonical literature on quantum gravity that you may find as of 2011 and that is ready to be presented pedagogically to students as material they can further work with, see e.g. this list
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/11/string-theory-textbooks.html
Things that have been proposed as "alternative theories" can't really compete with string theory when it comes to the degree of rigor, strength of the connections with the previous established physics, and just simple pure internal consistency and the discouraging quality of canonical textbooks on these subjects is one of the simplest ways to see this fact.
In the same way, you can't really find any meaningful pre-1983 textbooks on quantum gravity, either, because this discipline wasn't understood, almost at all. Right before 1983, people working on the most similar kind of physics (except for 5 string theorists) would do research in supergravity which is really just a field theory generalizing Einstein's general relativity, adding extra fermionic fields and a fermionic symmetry (local supersymmetry) but it's a field theory. Most of the calculations they did were classical, just like in classical GR, and the attempted quantum calculations using the tools of quantum field theory were seen to lead to a divergent short-distance behavior. That changed in 1984 when superstring theory was shown to be free of anomalies and UV problems while it was capable of producing all the right classes of physical phenomena known from supergravity and gauge theories coupled to matter.
While the theories – quantum gravity and string theory – almost certainly have to be the same thing, the two names are used differently. "Quantum gravity" is reserved for the research of questions that can only be asked or that only become hard if the physical system respects both the postulates of quantum mechanics as well as those of general relativity (gravity). They're the questions of the type "how do the postulates or effects of quantum mechanics influence one or another situation where the curved geometry plays a key role?".
Some of these questions are answered by string/M-theory in its current state; some of these questions were approximately answered even by QFT tools before string theory; some of these questions remain open.
For example, the Wheeler-DeWitt equation (together with its various solutions such as the Hartle-Hawking state) mostly belongs to the third category (the things not yet established). It's the equation $H\Psi=0$, expressing the idea that the Hamiltonian constraint in GR actually encodes the full evolution in time, something that is possible due to the ambiguous meaning of the word "time" in diffeomorphism-symmetric theories. To solve it, one must first define his own time, by linking it to some coordinate-independent evolving quantity, and so on.
Partial arguments why this equation should be true exist, much like some approximate demonstrations how it could work in truncated schemes. However, at the end, this equation should only be applied to the Hilbert space of a full working theory of gravity. At this moment, and most likely not only at this moment, string/M-theory is the only theory that satisfies this condition. Unfortunately, the understanding of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, if one exists, at the level of string theory is highly incomplete, to put it euphemistically. In fact, the equation itself is unnatural because the diffeomorphism symmetry is just one among infinitely many similar symmetries and the Hamiltonian linked to it is just one of many operators that should be treated on equal footing if they are treated at all. So it's questionable whether the Wheeler-DeWitt equation will ever tell us something new again or whether it has been superseded. Maybe, it should be replaced by some more complex structure we don't know.
Before 1983, the Wheeler-DeWitt equation was as confusing as today and our knowledge about it boils down to one or a few papers, most of which remain confusing. This has never been a stuff ready to be printed in textbooks and taught to students. It's a speculative suggestive work in progress that doesn't have to lead anywhere.
The Hawking (black hole) radiation is sometimes included into quantum gravity but Hawking's original calculation was done within effective quantum field theory, really ordinary non-gravitating quantum field theory on a curved background. So strictly speaking, it shouldn't really be considered a part of quantum gravity. In this way, he could have derived the black hole temperature. Indirectly via thermodynamics, this also implies that black holes should have an entropy and many microstates. Why they possess the required entropy had been a mystery through the mid 1990s when the entropy was microscopically computed in string theory – for the first black hole and then for dozens of others (lots of multi-parameter supersymmetric black holes, near-supersymmetric i.e. near-extremal black holes, and some completely non-supersymmetric black holes in which the stringy "tricks" may be applied as well). Aside from consistent and convergent formulae for graviton scattering amplitudes, this became a huge piece of new evidence that string theory is a consistent theory of quantum gravity and it remains the only theory that is able to solve either of these problems.
It's not true that all questions surrounding the information loss paradox have been resolved. While we know that the information isn't lost after all, the non-local processes that (as we know indirectly) surely take place in string theory are not well-understood. How far they operate? Why? How much can they change at all? Could they become observable in non-black-hole experiments? And so on. These questions remain mostly open.
A special part of quantum gravity is quantum cosmology. Here, we're not really talking about the common description of inflation that is needed to explain the cosmic microwave background; the latter is, once again, governed by quantum field theory on fixed curved backgrounds and shouldn't really be included in quantum gravity per se. Most of it remains inconclusive within string theory – even though people have already taken their fast interpretations what important processes happen when they talk about the multiverse etc. – and once again, it is not addressed by other approaches at all.
There are some other partial questions of quantum gravity that have been understood such as the changing effective dimensionality or topology of spacetime and so on (those things are allowed, do occur, and sometimes they are under complete calculational control). All these things have mostly been clarified by string theory. If you summarize the successes and failures of string theory as a tool to answer general questions about quantum gravity, the situations (including singularities) that are close enough to static ones (where supersymmetry may be preserved etc.) are well-understood in string theory; the heavily time-dependent situations such as the Schwarzschild singularity or the very initial point of the Big Bang are (mostly) not understood. But let me return to the original questions.
Prejudices vs insights
The word "prejudices" is clearly emotionally loaded. Such emotional labels don't belong to the realms of science that investigate totally plausible – and in fact, given the quantitative evidence, very likely – statements. I think that "insights" would be far more accurate but let's call them "general propositions" to be impartial.
String the