African American Authors, 1745-1945: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook - Hardcover

The 78 writers profiled here include well-known individuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, as well as lesser known writers such as Elizabeth Laura Adams (1909-?), Sarah Lee Brown Fleming (1876-1963), and Lucy Terry (1730-1821), who in 1746 composed Bars Fight, "the earliest extant poem written by a black person in North America." The works of the authors who are represented include slave narratives, poetry, essays, plays, autobiographies, and general fiction. Entries are evenly split between males and females, and range from four to 20 pages, with most encompassing six pages. Each entry begins with a short biography. A discussion of the writer's major works and themes follows, with an overview of the critical reception in both popular and scholarly journals. Each entry concludes with a bibliography that lists the works of the profiled author and secondary sources for further investigation. The bibliographies are up-to-date, and the cross-referenced authors are starred the first time they appear. The work concludes with a selected bibliography, an index, and information about the editor and contributors.The stated purpose of this book is "to offer reliable, thorough, and up-to-date biographical, critical, and bibliographic information" for "advanced scholars, undergraduate students and even general readers." Most of the entries accomplish this goal with solid, astute analysis, although a few read like class assignments. However, many of the subjects profiled here have already been treated in earlier works. All but seven are included in the Oxford Companion to African American Literature (1996). Over half appear in the Norton Anthology of African American Literature (Norton, 1997), and nearly half are covered in Black Writers of America (Macmillan, 1972). Libraries that do not have those earlier works will find this a useful resource, while those that do may consider it an optional purchase. RBB
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