Books Received

ELT 38:4 1995 to compile an endless list of wrangles and peeves about who was included or excluded, the amount of space devoted to this or that author. A comparison with thirty-year-old Norton Anthologies reveals that the present editors have not abandoned the canon. All of the greatest and most representative writers of the two literatures are covered. But I may, I hope, be forgiven for wondering, and for expressing disappointment , at the inclusion of such worthies as Charlie Chaplin and Woodie Allen, Walt Disney and Spike Lee, Richard Harding Davis's mother (but not her famous son), and the exclusion of J. P. Donleavy, William Lyon Phelps, Frank Harris, Geoffrey Wolff, Baron Corvo, H. P. Lovecraft, Hayden Carruth, and virtually all of the writers of the 1890s. Then, too, the book includes a number of contemporary lilliputs, inevitably described as (to give a couple of examples) "an African-American lesbian feminist critic and writer" or "a radical feminist theorist and theologian," most of these with a book or two to his or her credit, plus a university press assessment of the life and achievement. Such inclusiveness is demeaning, occasionally humorous, and makes otherwise sportive questions about the absence of Rod McKuen, John Lennon, Chuck Berry, Jim Morrison, Gary Trudeau, or William M. Gaines of Mad Magazine, serious matters indeed. Still, it must be remembered that The Reader's Adviser is so obviously intended for the reference section of a college library that its users may never notice its flaws. And if they do, it seems certain that they will grant it a quick and complete absolution. Clinton K. Krauss Montpelier, Vermont I Books Received I Trollope, Anthony. Early Short Stories. Ed. and Intro. John Sutherland. The World's Classics. 1861-67; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. xxxi + 492 pp. Paper $9.95 Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Firm. Eds. Gerald Graff and James Phelan. New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1995. viii + 551 pp. Paper $18.95 Wills, Gary. Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. ix + 223pp. $19.95 Windeatt, Barry, ed. English Mystics of the Middle Ages. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xi + 311 pp. $59.95 572 ...