Twentieth Century Literary Criticism

This highly useful series presents substantial excerpts from the best criticism on the major literary figures and nonfiction writers, including novelists, poets, playwrights and literary theorists, of 1900 to 1999 – the era most frequently studied in high schools.

Each volume presents overviews of four to eight authors with chronologically arranged criticism representing the entire range of response to each author. A typical excerpt is prefaced by an annotation that explains the critics reputation and critical philosophy and providing a synopsis of the excerpt. Approximately 90-95% of critical essays are full text.

Every fourth volume is a Topics volume covering major literary movements, trends and other topics. Volumes include author, nationality, topic and title indexes; a cumulative title index to the entire series is published separately.