Perfect for reference or browsing, this volume includes some 80 authors and explores in excerpts of criticism (from books, essays, and reviews) their work and influence. Throughout, the coverage is international and the emphasis is on the many rare and insightful comments that are made on these authors who are increasingly accorded literary status and regarded in the critical mainstream.
This volume is the first in the venerable Library of Literary Criticism series to deal exclusively with genre. Highly selective, it includes 85 writers "prominently displayed in libraries and bookstores today." Such best-selling authors as Stephen King, John le Carr{‚}e, Sara Paretsky, and Tony Hillerman are included, as are Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, and others not known primarily as genre writers. Here also are a few nineteenth-century writers, such as Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe.
Authors are arranged alphabetically, beginning with Douglas Adams and ending with Phyllis Whitney. For each author, 6-12 critical excerpts are reprinted. Drawn from a variety of sources, including periodicals, scholarly journals, and books, the excerpts represent a high standard of criticism. There are comments by W. H. Auden on Raymond Chandler, Isaac Asimov on Arthur C. Clarke, Edmund Wilson on H. P. Lovecraft, and George Orwell on Jules Verne. No biographical information is provided, beyond birth and death dates. A listing of the works mentioned under each author and an index of critics complete the text.
Though selective in the authors he chooses, the editor assumes very broad definitions of the mystery, fantasy, and science fiction genres. Most of the expected names are included, but there are also a few that one doesn't usually encounter in a work on genre fiction, such as Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Pynchon. None of the writers is examined within the context of the genres they have been chosen to represent. The reader will need to turn to other sources for information on the genres themselves.
Some of the writers included here can be found in earlier Library of Literary Criticism volumes, although entries are not duplicated, and this new work contains more recent material. Most of the writers are also covered in various Gale sets, including Contemporary Literary Criticism and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Some critical excerpts appear in both Twentieth Century Literary Criticism and the book under review, for example, Raymond Chandler's and Mary McCarthy's articles on Dorothy Sayers. However, the Gale sets contain much more information. The TCLC entry on Sayers, for example, is 30 pages in length and includes biographical and bibliographic information as well as criticism. While Modern Mystery, Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers offers the convenience of a single volume, it is limited by the fact that it covers so few writers. Though not a first choice, it may be useful in smaller libraries that don't own the Gale sets, or in large libraries with extensive holdings in genre fiction.
