Research Guide to Biography and Criticism, Vol 5 and 6 - Hardcover

Walton Beacham; Erica Dickson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 093383327X ISBN 13: 9780933833272

Publisher: Beacham Pub, 1991

Synopsis

Book by Beacham, Walton, Dickson, Erica

About this title

Reviews

Continuing the format of the set, Volumes 5 and 6 of this guide include annotated bibliographies and streamlined biographies of nearly 130 English-language authors who have been the object of critical interest in recent years. Also included are older authors (e.g., Louisa May Alcott, John Greenleaf Whittier) who have been rediscovered, and approximately a fifth of the authors treated are women. For the purposes of further study, attention is directed to certain worthy facets of an author's oeuvre that have failed to receive critical attention. The set has its drawbacks. That availability of criticism is a major consideration for inclusion does not explain the absence from the set's cumulative index of mainstream authors such as Henry Adams and Edgar Lee Masters, black authors like Frederick Douglass and Amiri Baraka, or 1960s poets like Thom Gunn and Kenneth Patchen. Furthermore, in the biographical chronologies that precede the annotated citations, details seem unequally weighted. We are told, for example, that Alice Walker had an abortion in the early 1960s, but no mention is made of Margaret Walker's plagiarism suit against Alex Haley for Roots. Still, a valuable innovation here repeated in both volumes is an introductory outline advising students how to use this work most effectively to develop a research topic of their own. Recommended, especially if your facility has already purchased the previous volumes of the set.
- Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacham Pub
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 093383327X
• ISBN 13: 9780933833272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 6
• Editor: Charles J. Moseley