Summary

The five-volume Student's Encyclopedia of Great American Writers is the landmark reference to the greatest writers in American literature, written specifically for high school students and correlated to the NCTE standards. Featuring more than 180 of the authors taught most often in the high school curriculum, this comprehensive set contains alphabetical entries, from 2,000 to 20,000 words each, divided into sections on the author's life and on the author's major works. An additional section in each entry provides topics for discussion and writing, many of which refer to other writers or works, helping students make connections between texts (a key component of language arts standards).

The editors of this authoritative guide to American literature are experts both in literary criticism and in the teaching of literature to secondary school students, and the tone and content of this encyclopedia reflect this. A bibliography and chronology round out this helpful resource.

Featured writers include:

• Maya Angelou
• Ray Bradbury
• Willa Cather
• Kate Chopin
• Emily Dickinson
• Frederick Douglass
• T.S. Eliot
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• William Faulkner
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Benjamin Franklin
• Robert Frost
• Ernest Hemingway
• Langston Hughes
• Zora Neale Hurston
• Washington Irving
• Yusef Komunyakaa
• Chang-rae Lee
• Cotton Mather
• Toni Morrison
• Tim O'Brien
• Eugene O'Neill
• Edgar Allan Poe
• J.D. Salinger
• John Steinbeck
• Amy Tan
• Mark Twain
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Edith Wharton
• Richard Wright
• and many more.

Specifications

Bibliography. Chronology. In five volumes.

About the Author(s)

General editor Patricia M. Gantt is one of the country's leading experts on the subject of literature education for secondary-school students. She has taught English at the secondary-school and college levels for more than 40 years. She is currently professor of English and chair of the English Education Committee at Utah State University. She also works for the College Board as a teacher trainer for Advanced Placement English classes. Her books include Teaching Ideas for 7-12 English Language Arts: What Really Works and Teaching Ideas for University English: What Really Works.

Andrea Tinnemeyer teaches English at the College Preparatory School in Oakland, California. She received her Ph.D. from Rice University and is the author of Identity Politics of the Captivity Narrative after 1848 and many scholarly articles.

Blake Hobby is an assistant professor of English and director of the University Honors Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and a former high school English teacher. He is the volume editor of 16 volumes in the Bloom's Literary Themes series as well as the author of many scholarly articles and a former managing editor of the James Joyce Literary Supplement.

Robert C. Evans is professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery. He is the author or coauthor of many books, including Ben Jonson and the Poetics of Patronage, Short Fiction: A Critical Companion, Kate Chopin’s Short Fiction, and many more.

Paul Crumbley is professor of English at Utah State University. He is the author of Inflections of the Pen: Dash and Voice in Emily Dickinson, coeditor of The Search for a Common Language: Environmental Writing and Education, contributing coeditor of Body My House: May Swenson's Work and Life, and author of the forthcoming Winds of Will: Emily Dickinson and the Sovereignty of Democratic Thought. He has also served as a faculty consultant for the Advanced Placement English Examination.

Reviews and Awards

"This title stands out for its recognition and inclusion of a large number of female writers and writers of a variety of ethnicities."

"...important and useful...Recommended."

"...an authoritative guide for teaching and studying American literature at the secondary school level...accessible...useful...recommended for high school and public libraries..."

"Best Bets for Student Researchers"