| Summary, etc. |
For more than half a century, The Oxford Companion to American Literature has been an unparalleled guide to America's literary culture, providing one of the finest resources to this country's rich history of great writers. Now this acclaimed work has been completely revised and updated to reflect current developments in the world of American letters. Editors James D. Hart, until the time of his death, and Phillip Leininger have updated the Sixth Edition in light of what has happened in American literature since 1982. To this end, they have revised the entries on such established authors as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and Joyce Carol Oates, and they have added well over 180 new entries on novelists (T. Coraghessan Boyle, Tim O'Brien, Louise Erdrich, Cormac McCarthy, Don De Lillo), poets (Rita Dove, Weldon Kees), playwrights (Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson), popular writers (Stephen King, Louis L'Amour), historians (James McPherson, David Herbert Donald, William Manchester), naturalists (Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey), and literary critics (Camille Paglia, Richard Ellman). In addition, the Companion boasts more women, African American, and ethnic voices with new entries on such luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, M.F.K. Fisher and William Least Heat-Moon, Ursula Le Guin and Oscar Hijuelos, among many others. These additions represent only part of the revisions for the new edition. Of course, the basic qualities of the Companion that readers have grown to know and love over the years are as superb as ever. With over 5,000 total entries, The Oxford Companion to American Literature reflects the dynamic balance between past and contemporary literature, surveying virtually every aspect of our national literature, from the Pulitzer Prize to pulp fiction, and from Walt Whitman to William F. Buckley, Jr. There are over 2,000 biographical profiles of important American authors (with information regarding their style, subjects, and major works) and influential foreign writers as well as other figures who have been important in the nation's social and cultural history. There are more than 1,100 full summaries of important American novels, stories, essays, poems (with verse form noted), plays, biographies and autobiographies, tracts, narratives, and histories. And the new edition provides historical background and astute commentary on literary schools and movements, literary awards, magazines, newspapers, and a wide variety of other matters directly related to writing in America. Finally, the book is thoroughly cross-referenced and features an extensive and fully updated index of literary and social history. www.shelfari.com |
