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.
