Briefer Mention

325 BRIEFER MENTION In recent years publishers have been most willing to spend funds on biographical reference tools, books often uneven in content and so expensive only libraries purchase them. The Dictionary of Literay Biography Series (DLB) by Gale Research, however, is an exception, though each volume is still a considerable investment for individuals. The avowed purpose of the series is "not only to provide reliable information in a convenient format but also to place the figures in thelarger perspectives of literary history and to offer appraisals of their accomplishments by qualified scholars ." The series, for the most part, does this. The biocritical essays in a number of volumes are excellent sources not only for new-comers to the Transition period, but seasoned veterans as well. Four new such volumes in the DLB Series are now available, and your librarian should be notified. A particularly important addition which will be of interest to ELT readers is Thomas F. Staley's (ed.) Br itish Novelists, 1890-1929: Traditionalists, 34. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1985. $85.00 Thirty-two figures are covered: Maurice Baring (Peter M. Irvine); Max Beerbohm (Ann Adams Cleary); Arnold Bennett (Anita Miller); John Buchan (Barbara B. Brown); G. K. Chesterson (Brian Murray); Joseph Conrad (Kingsley Widmer); Marie Corelli (Margaret B. McDowell); E. M. Delafield (Margaret B. McDowell); Norman Douglas (Ralph D. Linderman); Ford Madox Ford (Richard F. Peterson); E. M. Forster (Frederick P.W. McDowell); John Galsworthy (Brian Murray); David Garnett (Roland Dille); Kenneth Grahame (Margaret B. McDowell); Maurice Hewlett (Ann Adams Cleary); James Hilton (Lauren H. Pringle); Constance Holme (Charlotte Stewart ); Jerome K. Jerome (Ruth Marie Faurot); Rudyard Kipling (Mary A. O'Toole); Compton Mackenzie (Brian Murray); Charles Morgan (Maureen Modlish); H. H. Munro (Maureen Modlish); J. B. Priestley (A. A. DeVitis); Frederick William Rolfe (Maureen Modlish); V. Sackvi1le-West (Priscilla Diaz-Dorr); Frank Swinnerton (Douglas M. Catron); Hugh Walpole (Mary A. O1ToHe); Sylvia Townsend Warner (Barbara Brothers); Mary Webb (Margaret B. McDowell); H. G. Wells (Michael Draper); Oscar Wilde (Robert Boyle); P. G. Wodehouse (Richard J. Voorhees). A supplemental reading list is also included. Also see Thomas F. Staley's (ed). Br itish Novelists, 1890-1929: Modernists, 36. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1985. $8 5.00This volume covers twenty-nine figures, many of which fall outside ELT's purview. However, several essays examin "minor" authors and should be of interest: Stella Benson (Kitti Carriker Eastman); Ronald Firbank (Charles Burkhart); Sheila Kaye-Smith (Paul A. Doyle); Rose Macaulay 326 (J. V. Guerinot); Dorothy M. Richardson (Gloria G. Fromm); May Sinclair (Margaret B. McDowell); Bram Stoker (Daniel Farson and Philip B. Demateis). Perhaps off lesser interest for the Transition period but still worth noting is William E. Fredeman and Ira B. Nadel's (eds.) Victorian Poets Before 1850, 32. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1984. $82.00 Among the forty-one poets covered in this volume are Matthew ARnold, Robert Browning, John Keble, Edward Lear, and Alfred Tennyson. Also covered are Victorian novelists and nonfiction prose writers who wrote verse, including Emily Bronte, Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and John Henry Newman. Similarly, you should make note of William E. Fredeman and Ira B. Nadel's (eds.) Victorian Poets After 1850, 35. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1985. $85.00 Among the fortyone poets covered are G. M. Hopkins, George Meredith, William Morris, Coventry Patmore, Christina Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, A. C. Swinburne and James Thomson. Essays on a number of lesser know poets are also included. Bowen, Zack, and James F. Carens, eds. A Companion to Joyce Studies. London and Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. $ This one-volume work "attempts to deal with the entire body of Joyce's work and with the range, of contemporary scholarship" on Joyce. The "intent is to treat as fully and completely as one volume will allow whatever contemporary critical scrutiny has been able to discern in Joyce's works." All the essays are original: 1. "James Augustine Aloysius Joyce" (Edmund J. Epstein); 2. "Joyce as a Letter Writer" (Mary T. Reynolds); 3. "A Textual and Publishing History" (Michael Groden); 4. "Joyce's Verses" (Chester G. Anderson); "Dubliners" (Florence L. Walzl; 6. "Stephen Hero" (Thomas E. Connolly); 7. Portrait of the...