A darkly comic, satirical reference book about writers who never made it into the literary canon A signal event of literary scholarship, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure compiles the biographies of history’s most notable cases of a complete lack of literary success. As such, it is the world’s leading authority on the subject. Compiled in one volume by C. D. Rose, a well-educated person universally acknowledged in parts of England as the world’s pre-eminent expert on inexpert writers, the book culls its information from lost or otherwise ignored archives scattered around the globe, as well as the occasional dustbin. The dictionary amounts to a monumental accomplishment: the definitive appreciation of history’s least accomplished writers. Thus immortalized beyond deserving and rescued from hard-earned obscurity, the authors presented in this historic volume comprise a who’s who of the talentless and deluded, their stories timeless litanies of abject psychosis, misapplication, and delinquency. It is, in short, a treasure.

Dictionaries of biography.

This book is the first to gather in a single volume concise biographies of the most eminent men and women in the history of American law. Encompassing a wide range of individuals who have devised, replenished, expounded, and explained law, The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law presents succinct and lively entries devoted to more than 700 subjects selected for their significant and lasting influence on American law. Casting a wide net, editor Roger K. Newman includes individuals from around the country, from colonial times to the present, encompassing the spectrum of ideologies from left-wing to right, and including a diversity of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Entries are devoted to the living and dead, the famous and infamous, many who upheld the law and some who broke it. Supreme Court justices, private practice lawyers, presidents, professors, journalists, philosophers, novelists, prosecutors, and others--the individuals in the volume are as diverse as the nation itself. Entries written by close to 600 expert contributors outline basic biographical facts on their subjects, offer well-chosen anecdotes and incidents to reveal accomplishments, and include brief bibliographies. Readers will turn to this dictionary as an authoritative and useful resource, but they will also discover a volume that delights and entertains. Listed in The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law: John Ashcroft Robert H. Bork Bill Clinton Ruth Bader Ginsburg Patrick Henry J. Edgar Hoover James Madison Thurgood Marshall Sandra Day O'Connor Janet Reno Franklin D. Roosevelt Julius and Ethel Rosenberg John T. Scopes O. J. Simpson Alexis de Tocqueville Scott Turow And more than 700 others

Biographical sketches of 378 writers associated with the American South are included in this important new reference work. Compiled by 172 scholars, these summaries--many of which are not readily available elsewhere--provide in their total effect a brief history of southern literature from colonial times to the present.The volume is, in part, a companion to A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of Southern Literature (Louis D. Rubin, Jr., ed.), a work that has become a standard reference for anyone seriously interested in the literature of the South. With its wealth of essential biographical information on the region's writers, both major and minor, this new guide will take its place alongside that earlier volume as an invaluable aid to the study of southern writing. Especially useful will be complete listings of the first printings of the books by each writer provided after the respective summaries.Included as contributors of the individual biographical summaries are most of the better-known scholars of southern literature, plus a number of promising young scholars. The editors, each of whom is an outstanding scholar in southern literary studies, are:

Contains over 14,000 brief entries covering persons both past and present

Annotation.

A biographical dictionary which profiles over 30,000 individuals, including birth and death dates, major accomplishments, and historical influence.