Seven Modern American Novelists: An Introduction

This volume provides critical introductions to seven of the most significant American novelists of this century, bringing together in convenient book form the material from some of the University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers. The writers discussed and the contributing authors are Edith Wharton by Louis Auchincloss, Sinclair Lewis by Mark Schorer, F. Scott Fitzgerald by Charles E. Shain, William Faulkner by William Van O'Connor, Ernest Hemingway by Philip Young, Thomas Wolfe by C. Hugh Holman, and Nathanael West by Stanley Edgar Hyman. In an introduction Mr. O'Connor, who is one of the editors of the pamphlet series, discusses some critical principles as they apply to fiction writers in general and to twentieth-century American novelists in particular. He is the author of many volumes of literary criticism as well as a collection of short stories and was a professor of English at the University of California, Davis. Teachers, librarians, and others who use the material of the University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers for frequent reference or as classroom texts will find this book particularly useful. Biographical information about the writers as well as critical evaluations of their writing is given. A bibliography for each writer lists his works and critical and biographical works about him.