Reference Guide to Short Fiction (St. James Reference Guides) - Hardcover

Watson, Noelle (ed.)

9781558623347: Reference Guide to Short Fiction (St. James Reference Guides)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1558623345 ISBN 13: 9781558623347

Publisher: St. James Press, 1994

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Watson, Noelle

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From Booklist:

Discussed here are 325 writers and 400 individual works of short fiction. The writers are the "most significant" from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as recommended by advisers, who are listed in the prefatory material. The book covers foreign as well as English-language literature.

Entries for writers are arranged alphabetically, from Chinua Achebe to Mikhail Zoshchenko. Each includes a biography, primarily a who's who-type listing of dates, degrees, awards, etc. Following are a complete bibliography of the author's published works, listing not only short fiction but novels, verse, plays, and other works and a bibliography of secondary English-language sources. Finally, an essay, usually under 1,000 words, discusses the writer's important short works and makes some general statements about his or her major themes and significance. See references are provided for individual works, if any, that are discussed in the "Works" section of the volume. Though the emphasis is not on contemporary fiction, a number of still relatively young writers, such as Tatiana Tolstaia, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ann Beattie, are discussed.

Entries for works are arranged alphabetically by title; these are also generally under 1,000 words in length. Not every author discussed in the previous section is represented in "Works"; a few, such as John Updike and Flannery O'Connor, are represented by several stories. The 400 works discussed are, according to the "Editor's Note," "the best-known short stories and novellas written in, or translated to, English." These range from the familiar classics, "A Christmas Carol" by Dickens and "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry, to works by Mavis Gallant, Gabriel Garc{�}ia M{ }arquez, and Joyce Carol Oates. The earliest work is "The Marquise of O," written in 1810. The latest, "Wilderness Tips" by Margaret Atwood, was published in 1991.

Several useful lists appear before the main body of the work, including alphabetical and chronological lists of writers and works. An introduction reviews the development of the short story form, and a reading list provides citations to general histories. The text is further supported by a title index and notes on the 150 contributors, most of whom have academic credentials.

Similar works are Magill's Critical Survey of Short Fiction, newly revised in 1993, and Masterplots II Short Story Series (1986). Magill's has articles on 363 writers from all periods, including a number of contemporaries, such as T. Coraghessan Boyle, David Leavitt, and Ben Okri, not found in the St. James volume. Though both sources supply critical analysis, the Reference Guide has more biographical information and more extensive bibliographies. The Masterplots set provides analysis of 700 nineteenth- and twentieth-century stories. The Reference Guide provides the convenience of having authors and individual works presented in a single volume. Recommended for academic, high school, and public libraries, although those that own the Magill's and Masterplots sets may not consider the Reference Guide a necessary purchase.

From Library Journal:

In this superb reference work, coverage of the major short fiction authors of the 19th and 20th centuries is so exhaustive that it results in a virtual who's who of the genre. Expected entries on Joyce, Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Chopin, Wharton, Dinesen, Hemingway, and Hurston are joined by those on Chinua Achebe, Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Karel Capek, and Kawabata Yasunari, making this a truly inclusive work. It is divided into two parts: the first covers more than 300 authors and includes a biography, bibliography, and essay on each author. The second covers selected short stories, offering not only a plot summary but a critical interpretation as well. The St. James work is more compact (one volume vs. seven) than Magill's Critical Survey of Short Fiction ( LJ 8/93) yet contains more detailed coverage of each author. An essential purchase for all libraries.
- Neal Wyatt, Mary Washington Coll. Lib., Fredericksburg, Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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