Oxford University Press

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Named a 1998 Outstanding Academic Book by Choice

The Oxford Companion to African American Literature

Edited by WILLIAM L. ANDREWS, FRANCIS SMITH FOSTER, and TRUDIER HARRIS

The first one-volume reference work devoted to African-American
literature

The Souls of Black Folks, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Invisible Man, Notes
of a Native Son, "Letter from Birmingham Jail," I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings, The Piano Lesson, Beloved--the work of African American writers has
been a vital part of our nation's literary heritage for over two hundred and fifty years.
Now, The Oxford Companion to African American Literature provides the
first comprehensive one-volume reference work devoted to this rich tradition,
surveying the length and breadth of black literary history, focusing in particular on
the lives and careers of more than 400 writers.

Here indeed is the pantheon of African American writers--Phillis Wheatley and
Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois, Gwendolyn Brooks and
Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, James Baldwin and
Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, John Edgar Wideman and August
Wilson, Jamaica Kincaid and Gloria Naylor, Stanley Crouch and Cornel West, and
hundreds more. Moreover, the Companion includes entries on 150 major works of
African American literature (including synopses of novels), from Harriet Jacobs's
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Richard Wright's Native Son, to Lorraine
Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun; on literary characters, ranging from Bigger
Thomas, to Coffin Ed Johnson, Kunta Kinte, Sula Peace; on character types, such as
Aunt Jemima, Brer Rabbit, John Henry, Stackolee, and the trickster; and on such
icons of black culture as Muhammad Ali, John Coltrane, Marcus Garvey, Jackie
Robinson, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman. Here, too, are general articles on the
traditional literary genres, such as poetry, fiction, and drama; on genres of special
import in African American letters, such as autobiography, slave narratives, Sunday
School literature, and oratory; and on a wide spectrum of related topics, including
journalism, the black periodical press, major libraries and research centers, religion,
literary societies, women's clubs, and various publishing enterprises. There are also
entries on customs (such as conjuring, signifying), cultural expression (such as
dance, blues, and dress), and on unique aspects of black experience (such as the
Middle Passage, passing, and blue vein societies). Finally, the five-part, 15-page
essay, Literary History, captures the full sweep of African American writing in the
US, from the colonial and early national eras right up to the present day. The
Companion also features a comprehensive subject index; extensive
cross-referencing; and bibliographies after almost every article.

With contributions by more than 300 scholars--including such noted authorities as
Gerald Early, Nell Irvin Painter, Arnold Rampersad, Claudia Tate, and Craig
Werner--who offer criticism that is historically informed, thoughtfully researched,
and fair-minded, this superb volume presents a goldmine of information to the
student and the scholar, to the seeker of particular information and the browser intent
on opening up her or his intellectual horizons.

"This 'Companion,' which could hardly have been conceived twenty-five
years ago, is a fitting crown to the astonishing production in African
American literature and criticism that has swept over American literary
studies in the last two decades. With this remarkable resource at hand, the
study of African-American literature will never again be relegated to the
margins of the larger field. It is a breath-taking achievement." --Nellie
McKay, Professor of American & African-American Literature, University of
Wisconsin, Madison

"This is an indispensable collection of the voices and visions of
African-American writers and thinkers from the dawn of America to the
present. No library is complete without this volume."--Darlene Clark Hine

Features biographical profiles of some 400 writers, from major figures
such as Toni Morrison and Langston Hughes, to minor writers not found in
other reference works

Includes entries on 150 important works, literary characters, genres,
customs, and unique aspects of African-American life

Boasts contributions by some 300 scholars, including such notables as
Gerald Early, Nell Irvin Painter, Arnold Rampersad, and Claudia Tate

$55.00
0195065107
1997

New in paperback!

New National and Post-Colonial Literatures

An Introduction

Edited by BRUCE KING

The range of literature written in English but produced outside Britain and America has expanded considerably in recent years. This book provides a comparative and up-to-date survey of colonial,new national and post-colonial literatures, and related criticism. At the same time, the essays address the problem of establishing such politicized categories of literature; they recognize that, in a time of massive migration, rapid international communication, and increased demands by minorities, national cultures and national identities are less stable than ever before. Intended as an introduction for those new to the subject, the collection contributes to the ongoing discussion about the new literatures, and should also interest the specialist.
 

328 pp.
$24.95w*, paper, 0-19-818484-0
August 1998

The Devil's Mousetrap: Redemption and Colonial American Literature

Linda Munk

University of Toronto

The Devil's Mousetrap approaches the thought of three colonial New England divines--Increase Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Edward Taylor--from the perspective of literary criticism. Linda Munk focuses on the background of these men's thought--the sources on which they drew, both consciously and unconsciously, in framing their own theology--and shows that the language that the language these men
used in the pulpit is full of allusions to the Bible and Apocrypha, to Puritan treatises, and to post-biblical exegesis, Jewish and Christian. She untangles these allusions to provide essential insights into the construction of Puritan theology

1997   160 pp.; 1 b/w halftone
35.00w   0-19-511494-9

The Devil's Lane

Sex and Race in the Early South

Edited by CATHERINE CLINTON, Harvard University, and MICHELE GILLESPIE, Agnes Scott College

When Europeans settled in the early South, they quarreled over many things--but few imbroglios were so fierce as battles over land. Landowners wrangled bitterly over boundaries with neighbors and contested areas became known as "the devil's lane." Violence and bloodshed were but some of the consequences to befall those who ventured into these disputed territories.

 The Devil's Lane highlights important new work on sexuality, race, and gender in the South from the seventeeth- to the nineteenth-centuries. Contributors explore legal history by examining race, crime and punishment, sex across the color line, and slander. Emerging stars and established scholars such as Peter Wood and Carol Berkin weave together the fascinating story of competing agendas and clashing cultures on the southern frontier. One chapter focuses on a community's resistance to a hermaphrodite, where the town court conducted a series of "examinations" to determine the individual's gender. Other pieces address topics ranging from resistance to sexual exploitation on the part of slave women to spousal murders, from interpreting women's expressions of religious ecstasy to a pastor's sermons about depraved sinners and graphic depictions of carnage, all in the name of "exposing" evil, and from a case of infanticide to the practice of state-mandated castration.

 Several of the authors pay close attention to the social and personal dynamics of interracial women's networks and relationships across place and time. The Devil's Lane illuminates early forms of sexual oppression, inviting comparative questions about authority and violence, social attitudes and sexual tensions, the impact of slavery as well as the twisted course of race relations among blacks, whites, and Indians. Several scholars look particularly at the Gulf South, myopically neglected in traditional literature, and an outstanding feature of this collection.

 These eighteen original essays reveal why the intersection of sex and race marks an essential point of departure for understanding southern social relations, and a turning point for the field of colonial history. The rich, varied and distinctive experiences showcased in The Devil's Lane provides an extraordinary opportunity for readers interested in women's history, African American history, southern history, and especially colonial history to explore a wide range of exciting issues.

320 pp., 3 linecuts, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
$35.00w*, cloth, 0-19-511242-3
$16.95k, paper, 0-19-511243-1
July 1997 (tentative)

The Natural History of the Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (1819-1820)

HOWARD ENSIGN EVANS, Colorado State University (Emeritus)

 
"There is hardly a sentence that is ungraceful."--Donald Worster, author of Wealth of Nature and Under Western Skies. A little over 170 years ago--hardly a moment on the clock of history--one half of the United States was empty of all but Indians and the plants and game on which they subsisted. Indeed, acquiring the Louisiana Territory approximately doubled the size of the United States, adding 800,000 square miles of land that had scarcely been explored or adequately mapped. Americans would be given an in-depth look this rugged and untamed land only when Secretary of War John C. Calhoun and President James Monroe agreed that a military presence at the mouth of the Yellowstone River (near the boundary between North Dakota and Montana) would impress the Indians and serve notice to Canadian trappers and traders that some of their favorite beaver country was now part of the United States.

 In The Natural History of the Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (1819- 1820), Howard E. Evans offers a colorful history of the expedition of Major Stephen H. Long--the first scientific exploration of the Louisiana Territory to be accompanied by trained naturalists and artists. Made up of twenty-two men--military personnel and "scientific gentlemen"--the Long Expedition struggled on foot and horseback along the Front Range of the Rockies, living off the land, recording rivers and landforms, shooting birds, plucking plants, and catching lizards and insects to preserve for study. They were often thirsty and hungry, sometimes ill, and always tired. But theirs was an experience awarded to only a chosen few: the opportunity to see and record firsthand the pristine lands that so majestically defined the United States.

 Based primarily on the expedition members' reports and diaries, and often told in the participants' own words, this fascinating chronicle transports readers back to the near-virgin wilderness of 1820. We accompany naturalist Edwin James as he becomes the first man to climb Pike's Peak, and roam with him in his dual role as botanist, collecting a multitude of flora specimens, 140 of which were described by him and others as new. We sit with artist Samuel Seymour as he sketches in vivid detail the panorama of breathtaking peaks and prominent landforms, travel along with Titian Peale as he visits the homes of Native Americans and records with an artist's keen eye and gifted hand the intense beauty of this land's first inhabitants, and go exploring with zoologist Thomas Say as he describes never before seen mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and insects. Beautifully illustrated with crisp reproductions of Peale and Seymour's art, as well as photographs of the many plants and insects described by James and Say, The Natural History of the Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (1819-1820) offers a vivid account of this monumental expedition.

The story of the Long Expedition has been told before, but without due recognition of the party's great contributions to natural history. Now, anyone interested in the early history of the American West can witness for themselves how this vast and varied land looked and felt when it was first seen by trained scientists and artists.

288 pp., 45 halftone, 2 linecuts, 5-1/2 x 8-1/4
$30.00w, cloth, 0-19-511184-2
$14.95k, paper, 0-19-511185-0
May 1997 (tentative)
  

Combines the most telling fiction and nonfiction written about the American South from the eighteenth century to the present

The Oxford Book of the American South

Testimony, Memory, and Fiction

Edited by Edward L. Ayers and Bradley C. Mittendorf

The Oxford Book of the American South resonates with the words of black people and white, women and men, the powerless as well as the powerful. The collection presents the most telling fiction and nonfiction produced in the South from the late eighteenth century to the present. Renowned authors such as James Agee, Richard Wright, Maya Angelou, Lee Smith, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor appear in these pages, but so do people whose writing did not immediately reach a large audience. For example, Harriet A. Jacobs' book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which is now recognized as one of the most illuminating narratives of a former slave, was neglected for generations. And Sarah Morgan's powerful Civil War Diary has only recently come to widespread attention. The Oxford Book of the American South presents compelling autobiographies, diaries, memoirs, and journalism as well as stories and selections from novels, and runs the spectrum from the conservative to the radical, the traditional to the innovative. Editors Edward L. Ayers and Bradley C. Mittendorf have arranged these diverse readings so that they fit together into a rich mosaic of Southern life and history. The sections of the book The Old South, The Civil War and Its Consequences, Hard Times, and The Turning unfold a vivid record of life below the Mason Dixon line. We see the antebellum period both from the perspective of those who experienced it first-hand, such as Thomas Jefferson and former slaves Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass, and then from the perspective of authors looking back on that era, including William Styron and Sherley Anne Williams. Likewise, we see the Civil War through the eyes of witnesses such as Sam Watkins, through the eyes of later writers trying to make sense of the conflict, such as Robert Penn Warren, and through the eyes of those using the war's intense passions to fuel their fiction, such as Margaret Mitchell and Barry Hannah. The classic authors of the Southern Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s appear here in the context of the hard times in which they wrote. The years since World War II are chronicled in the powerful words of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail," George Garrett's "Good bye, Good bye, Be Always Kind and True," and Peter Taylor's "The Decline and Fall of the Episcopal Church, in the Year of Our Lord 1952." The editors have selected these readings, their Preface tells us, to convey "the passions that have surfaced time and again in more than two hundred years of Southern writing." Indeed, the struggles, defeats, and triumphs chronicled inThe Oxford Book of the American South speak not just to the South, but to all of the American experience. They document and evoke some of the most dramatic episodes in the nation's life

 "The Oxford Book of the American South is an adventurous, exciting, and satisfying way to look at the complex and ever-evolving culture of the South. Each of the fifty-eight selections is a jem in itself--personal, soul searching, and poignant. Some of the writers are familiar stars--Thomas Jefferson, Booker T. Washington, William Faulkner. Others, such as Lee Smith and Jim McLaurin, are stars rising. All together, this is a book about people, it is literature, and it is history as its best."--Joel Williamson, Fineberger Professor of Humanities, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

• Includes writers such as Maya Angelou, Willie Morris, William Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor
• The first anthology about the South to put fiction and nonfiction together

608 pp., 5-1/2 x 8-7/16
$30.00t, 0-19-508522-1
May 1997 (tentative)
  

American Women Writers to 1800

Edited by SHARON M. HARRIS

University of Nebraska

This anthology advances the ongoing process of filling documentary and intellectual gaps in our knowledge of early American culture. Including the writings of more than ninety women (many of whom have never before been published), the anthology captures cultural and individual diversity in early America. The collection both complements and extends earlier studies of colonial and revolutionary America with works that observe the natural resources of the "New World", the proliferation of religious movements, racial relations between Native Americans, African-Americans, and European settlers, and patriotic and loyalist sympathies during the Revolutionary years. Other issues raised include themes such as women's education, girlhood, childbirth, sexuality, the legal status of women, domestic economy, and the rise of feminist philosophies at the end of the 18th century. This anthology offers rich ground for a radical rethinking of early American women's lives and writings, and challenges our assumptions about early America itself.

1996   464 pp.; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4 in.
paper, 0-19-508453-5

1996 464 pp. $19.95s paper 0-19-508453-5

Selected Writings of Judith Sargent Murray

Edited by SHARON M. HARRIS

University of Nebraska

 
As a novelist, essayist, dramatist, and poet, Judith Sargent Murray candidly and often humorously asserted her opinions about the social and political conditions of women in late eighteenth-century America. As a committed feminist, she urged American women to enter a "new era in female history," yet published her own writings under a man's name in hopes of more widely disseminating her ideas.

 
Murray published poems, essays, and plays regularly in the Massachusetts Magazine. Throughout this early work, Murray addressed various controversial topics, including female education, racial prejudice, equality of the sexes, the value of self-esteem, and theories of universal salvation held by her family. In addition to her literary endeavors Murray was a prolific letter-writer, and revealed in her correspondence, as elsewhere, her unwavering commitment to human rights. Also during this period, Murray produced numerous sketches of celebrated female contemporaries and her major work, The Gleaner.

 With selections from The Gleaner and Murray's other publications, this latest addition to the Women Writers in English series unearths an important early feminist voice, one that should engage the intellect and imagination of readers both inside and outside the academy.

Women Writers in English 1350-1850

1995   320 pp.; 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 in.
cloth, 0-19-507883-7
paper, 0-19-510038-7 $39.95w cloth 0-19-507883-7 $17.95w* paper 0-19-510038-7

Romances of the Republic

Women, the Family, and Violence in the Literature of the Early American Nation

SHIRLEY SAMUELS

Cornell University

 
Romances of the Republic contributes to the lively field of scholarship on the interconnection of ideology and history in early American literature. Shirley Samuels illustrates the relations of sexual, political, and familial rhetoric in American writing from 1790 to the 1850s. With special focus on depictions of the American Revolution and on the use of the family as a model and instrument of political forces, she examines how the historical novel formalizes the more extravagant features of the gothic novel--incest, murder, the horror of family--while incorporating a sentimental vision of the family.
 

Samuels's analysis deals with writers like Charles Brockden Brown, Catherine Sedgwick, James Fenimore Cooper, and Mason Weems, and argues that their novels formulated a family structure that, unlike earlier models, was neither patriarchal nor a revolt against patriarchy. In emphasizing sibling rivalry and inter-generational quarrels about marriage, the novel of this period attempted to unite disparate political, national, class, and even racial positions.

208 pp., 5 halftones, 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
Please check General Catalog listing for current prices, 0-19-507988-4
July 1996 (tentative)

The American Intellectual Tradition

Volume I: 1630-1865

Third Edition

DAVID A. HOLLINGER, University of California, Berkeley, and CHARLES CAPPER

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

 
Revised and expanded, the third edition of this uniquely comprehensive two-volume anthology contains many of the most significant documents in American intellectual history, offering new selections from a diverse group of authors on European and American religious, scientific, artistic, political, social, and economic practices. This anthology makes readily available substantial selections from the writings of prominent American thinkers, ranging chronologically from 1630 to 1865 (Volume I), and 1865 to the present (Volume II). New additions to Volume I include selections from John Cotton, Mercy Otis Warren, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and William Lloyd Garrison. Volume II adds works by Gunnar Myrdal, Lillian Smith, Susan Sontag, Malcolm X, Hannah Arendt, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and others. This third edition offers the most recent and up-to-date scholarship on American intellectual history.

512 pp., 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
$21.95s, paper, 0-19-509725-4
$45.00w, cloth, 0-19-509724-6
January 1997

 LEONARD DINNERSTEIN, ROGER L. NICHOLS, and DAVID M. REIMERS,
Natives and Strangers: A Multicultural History of Americans. Third Edition.

The most up-to-date, informative account of this nation's rich multicultural fabric.

 The United States is the most culturally diverse nation on earth, a magnet for people from all over the globe. This diversity has always been one of the great engines of our economic growth. It is a source of great pride and much celebration (even on such unlikely occasions as St. Patrick's Day in Savannah, Georgia, where schools close, the local dairy offers mint-flavored milk, and a parade ensues second only to that of New York City). And of course diversity is the cause of much tension and bad feelings, as seen in America's recurrent attacks on minority groups. Now, in Natives and Strangers, Leonard Dinnerstein, Roger L. Nichols, and David M. Reimers present a wide-ranging historical narrative that illuminates the shifting tides of America's ethnic past and present, from the English colonists of Jamestown to the Asians and Mexicans of the West.

 A sweeping, ambitious chronicle of our unique cultural mosaic, spanning over nearly four hundred years, Natives and Strangers surveys America's legacy of assimilation and difference, of poverty and economic advancement, of ethnic conflict and intercultural mingling, expertly weaving together these strands into an engaging and informative whole. The authors consider the changing fortunes of American Indians, slaves, and immigrants, describing how newcomers interacted and often clashed with native-born people, with government and law enforcement, and with one another in crowded tenements or on expansive farmlands. They paint a compelling portrait of the extraordinary range of immigrant experience in America: working conditions and family life, communities of religion and language, political aspirations and social repression. The authors also explore the spectrum of ethnic coalitions that have fought for equal access to scarce resources and the rise of individuals of distinct ethnic lineage to local, state, and national offices. And they discuss the periodic surges of nativism directed at those cultural groups considered at odds with mainstream society, from vitriolic attacks on the "hordes of wild Irishmen" in the early days of the American republic to the torrents of abuse heaped upon Asian immigrants until long after World War II. Finally, the book examines some of the anomalies of immigrant life in America: why, for instance, have the Germans and Scandinavians built strong communities in the Midwest, while Chinese populations have congregated in New York and San Francisco? And how did Japanese immigrants overcome decades of venomous xenophobia to become one of America's most successful, highly educated minority groups, while Puerto Ricans remain near the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder?

 Natives and Strangers offers telling insight into the lives and history of immigrants, American Indians, and African Americans, providing readers with the most up-to-date, informative account of this nation's rich multicultural fabric. A commpelling portrait of the extraordinary range of immigrant experience in America

About the Authors:

 Leonard Dinnerstein is Professor of History at the University of Arizona. Roger L. Nichols is Professor of History at the University of Arizona. David M. Reimers is Professor of History at New York University.

384 pp., 35 halftones, 5 maps, 5-1/2 x 8-1/4
$25.00t, cloth, 0-19-509083-7
November 1996 (tentative)  

March 28, 2000