American Writers

Retrospective Supplement I
Published by Charles Scribner's Sons

This collection of critical and biographical articles covers hundreds of notable authors from the 17th century to the present day. Signed essays, 12-15 pages in length by noted scholars, provide thought-provoking insights into the lives, careers and works of American writers. Each Supplement covers approximately 20 additional authors.

Review:

"Originating in a series of pamphlets issued by the University of Minnesota Press between 1961 and 1972, the original essays in the American Writers series, assembled in the two base volumes published by Scribner's in 1974, have grown long in the tooth as the scholarly world has continued to explore and assess the work of writers such as Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Eudora Welty, and Walt Whitman. Thus, this volume's nineteen entirely new essays on as many authors are welcome complements to their older counterparts. The essays on Nabokov and, even more so Updike, are especially welcome since Nabokov continued to publish after 1974 (and posthumous works have appeared as well) and Updike has remained very vital and productive right up to the present. In the style of the series, these lengthy essays weave together biographical information, literary analysis, and commentary from critics to sketch a portrait of both artist and artistic creations. The articles' scholar-authors (among whom is Hemingway biographer Scott Donaldson on Hemingway) provide bibliographies of primary works organized by genre and selective secondary bibliographies. Because these new essays are welcome, this compilation is deserving of a place in reference collections; indeed, it already has one in those that include the cumulative Scribner Writers Series on CD-ROM."
-- Rettig on Reference (July 1998)

Published/Released: November 1997
ISBN 13: 9780684804941
ISBN 10: 0684804948
DDC: 810.9
Product number: 167861
Shipping Weight: 3.35 lbs (1.52 kgs)