Brian Lee's study of American fiction from 1865 to 1940 draws on a wealth of material by, amongst others, Twain, James, Dreiser, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner. Though the works of these writers have been closely scrutinised by postwar critics in Europe and America, few attempts have yet been made to utilise the new critical approaches and theories in the service of literary history. Brian Lee does so in this book, relating the writers of the period - both major and minor - to its patterns of immense economic, social and intellectual change.

A Companion to American Fiction, 1865-1914 is a groundbreaking collection of essays written by leading critics for a wide audience of scholars, students, and interested general readers. An exceptionally broad-ranging and accessible Companion to the study of American fiction of the post-civil war period and the early twentieth century Brings together 29 essays by top scholars, each of which presents a synthesis of the best research and offers an original perspective Divided into sections on historical traditions and genres, contexts and themes, and major authors Covers a mixture of canonical and the non-canonical themes, authors, literatures, and critical approaches Explores innovative topics, such as ecological literature and ecocriticism, children’s literature, and the influence of Darwin on fiction

In this remarkable book, Tony Hilfer provides a major survey of the wealth of post-war American fiction. He analyses the major modes and genres of writing, from realist to postmodernist metafiction and black humour, the fiction of social protest, women's writing, and the traditions of African-American, Southern and Jewish-American fiction. Key writers discussed include William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Vladimir Nabokov and Joyce Carol Oates. The book concludes by exploring contemporary trends through detailed case-studies of Donald Barthelme and Toni Morrison.

Caribbean Literature in English places its subject in its precise regional context. The `Caribbean', generally considered as one area, is highly discrete in its topography, race and languages, including mainland Guyana, the Atlantic island of Barbados, the Lesser Antilles, Trinidad, and Jamaica, whose size and history gave it an early sense of separate nationhood. Beginning with Raleigh's Discoverie of...Guiana (1596), this innovative study traces the sometimes surprising evolution of cultures which shared a common experience of slavery, but were intimately related to individual local areas. The approach is interdisciplinary, examining the heritage of the plantation era, and the issues of language and racial identity it created. From this base, Louis James reassesses the phenomenal expansion of writing in the contemporary period. He traces the influence of pan-Caribbean movements and the creation of an expatriate Caribbean identity in Britain and America: `Brit'n' is considered as a West Indian island, created by `colonization in reverse'. Further sections treat the development of a Caribbean aesthetic, and the repossession of cultural roots from Africa and Asia. Balancing an awareness of the regional identity of Caribbean literature with an exploration of its place in world and postcolonial literatures, this study offers a panoramic view that has become one of the most vital of the `new literatures in English'. This accessible overview of Caribbean writing will appeal to the general reader and student alike, and particularly to all who are interested in or studying Caribbean literatures and culture, postcolonial studies, Commonwealth 'new literatures' and contemporary literature and drama.

The multi-volume Longman literature in English series aims to provide students of literature with a critical introduction to the major genres in their historical and cultural context. This book looks at cinema, painting and architecture in 20th-century America, as well as the culture of politics.

In this book Professor Berkowitz studies the diversity of American drama from the stylistic, experimental plays of O'Neill, through verse, tragedy and community theatre, to the theatre of the 1990s. The discussions range through dramatists, plays, genres and themes, with full supporting appendix material. It also examines major dramatists such as Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, Sam Shephard, Tennessee Williams and August Wilson and covers not only the Broadway scene but also off Broadway movements and fringe theatres and such subjects as women's and African-American drama.

Written in an engaging and accessible manner, English Literature in the Age of Chaucer serves as both a lucid introduction to Middle English literature for those coming fresh to the study of earlier English writing, and as a stimulating examination of the themes, traditions and the literary achievement of a number of particulary original and interesting authors. In addition to detailed and sensitive treatment of Chaucer's major works, the book includes chapters on his chief contemporaries, such as John Gower, William Langland and the Gawain-poet. It also examines the often underrated contribution to the English literary tradition of his successors John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve, as well as the interesting and original work of the Scottish poets, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, who also claim Chaucer as their model. Apart from the narrative poetry of Chaucer and his followers, the book also contains chapters on the Middle English lyric; Middle English prose, including Mandeville's travels; the most original and imaginative writings of the Middle English mystics, in particular Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe; and Thomas Malory's impressive prose compilation of Arthurian stories.

Reader's Guide Literature in English provides expert guidance to, and critical analysis of, the vast number of books available within the subject of English literature, from Anglo-Saxon times to the current American, British and Commonwealth scene. It is designed to help students, teachers and librarians choose the most appropriate books for research and study.

Literary History in America has been built around individual names, titles, and dates, such as the years in which significant works of fiction were published. Yet most of the fiction published from 1850 to 1900 first appeared in a number of installment formats. That books were first made available to the public in parts has been dismissed as an interesting but critically irrelevant fact of literary history, but now scholars recognize that modes of production shape literary meanings, not just for individual works, but in the larger culture as well. Lund explains how most American novels were published and read between 1850 and 1900, then provides the titles of several hundred serial works, their parts' divisions, and the dates of publication. Lund considers 69 authors and 285 titles, making America's Continuing Story the most complete study of its kind to date.