Author Description

From Booklist This revised edition combines the character profiles in Cyclopedia of Literary Characters (1963) and Cyclopedia of Literary Characters II (1990). There are 568 new entries, adding character descriptions from titles in Masterplots II African American Literature (1994), Masterplots II American Fiction Supplement (1994), Masterplots II Women's Literature (1995), and Masterplots Revised Second Edition (1996), bringing the total number of characters to 29,000 from more than 3,200 titles. Among the new entries are Anne Tyler's Accidental Tourist, Toni Morrison's Beloved, Caryl Phillips' Cambridge, Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, Oscar Hijuelos' Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Larry Heinemann's Paco's Story, and Alice McDermott's That Night. Eighty-four entries have been rewritten, and a number have been updated. Entries are arranged alphabetically by the title of the work. Volume 1 begins with Aaron's Rod by D. H. Lawrence, and volume 5 concludes with Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm. Entries, which are signed, begin with the book's title, foreign title if originally published in a language other than English, author's name with birth and death years, date of first publication, genre, locale, time of action, and plot type. Characters are arranged in order of importance; major characters have 100-to 150-word write-ups. Volume 5 contains three indexes: title, author, and character. The character index is most helpful in locating the author and work(s) with which a certain character is associated. No other treatment of literary characters matches this one in breadth. Libraries that already own Cyclopedia of Literary Characters and Cyclopedia of Literary Characters II will probably want to consider this revised edition, since it incorporates a considerable amount of new material. Recommended for high-school, public, and academic libraries.