Author Description

William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Robert Penn Warren, and Thomas Wolfe stand at the pinnacle of modern American fiction. Their works are among the most widely read and extensively studied today. As social realists, they described life honestly and accurately, influencing generations of writers around the world. Modern Classic Writers, part of the Essential Bibliography of American Fiction series, introduces the serious reader and student to each writer's body of work and to sources that illuminate his writing and his life. Modern Classic Writers includes a foreword by George Garrett, Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, that comments on these writers and discusses their collective contribution to American fiction. Based on Facts On File's four-volume Bibliography of American Fiction series, each volume in this concise series profiles between six and ten authors selected according to their backgrounds and writings. The forewords written by experts in literature offer readers a fuller understanding of the authors as a group and place their writings in a larger context. Entries are arranged alphabetically by author and begin with a complete primary bibliography of the author's books in all genres: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama. The secondary bibliography, intended to enhance the reader's understanding of an author and his works, lists major biographical and critical books and articles. A list of archives locating the principal holdings of an author's manuscripts and private papers completes each entry. Modern Classic Writers is the definitive resource for anyone who seeks to expand his or her knowledge about the most widely read authors of our time. Whether the reader wants to discover other works by a favorite author or wants to explore the body of criticism that the works have inspired, this volume provides a reliable road map for the literary journey.