Foreword

The MLA Bibliography ceased print publication with the 2008 volume, and this essential, long-standing scholarly resource will hereafter be available solely as an electronic database. The step was almost inevitable. Compilation of the Bibliography is a painstaking and continuous process and is never quite complete: a print volume, when it appears, does not comprehensively record all relevant items published during that year. Meantime, the Internet is rapidly displacing the library reference room as the first stop in research, and the long row of hefty, black-clothbound Bibliography volumes is seldom disturbed. The electronic version, updated ten times a year, is more complete and more convenient. But the print version had something the electronic one does not: it was organized and suborganized by periods and topics and authors, and those divisions, hierarchical and inflexible though they might be, at least imposed a helpful sense of order. To find order electronically, we must now make our own.

The new bibliographical reality gives me the opportunity to emphasize the importance of American Literary Scholarship as a means of supplying not only order but also significance to the continuing abundance of scholarly publication, and to mention a change in the table of contents. Each year we are constrained to survey the important work in American literature in fewer than 600 pages, even as we expand our efforts to incorporate coverage of the international contributions to the field. To address the problem—some users may feel we are creating a new one—Gary Scharnhorst and I, who alternate as editors of this series, have decided to eliminate the separate "Themes, Topics, Criticism" chapter. Because of the author-period-genre emphasis in the organization of American Literary Scholarship, some very wide-ranging works may be omitted entirely from discussion as a result of our decision. But we are confident that the majority of these works will be covered, even if in briefer commentaries in multiple chapters.

American Literary Scholarship is indebted to the scholars who give their time and energy, and especially their expertise, to this enterprise. Joining the roster in the current volume are Amanda Gailey and Jane Donahue Eberwein ("Whitman and Dickinson"), Alan Gribben ("Mark Twain"), Ted Atkinson ("Faulkner"), Reiner Smolinski ("Literature to 1800"), Sally E. Parry ("Fiction: 1900 to the 1930s"), David K. Sauer ("Drama"), and Jena Habegger-Conti (the "Nordic Contributions" contingent). My thanks to all, and compound thanks to Alan Gribben, who stepped into the Mark Twain chapter on very short notice after the sad and sudden death of Michael Kiskis. Professor Gribben will now step back out, to be succeeded next year by John Bird. In addition, Karen Roggenkamp will replace Andrew M. Smith and Elizabeth J. Wright ("Hawthorne"), Andrew Lopenzina will replace Reiner Smolinski ("Literature to 1800"), Timothy P. Redman will follow Barry Ahearn ("Poetry: 1900 to the 1940s"), and Floriana Puglisi will take over the "Italian Contributions" portion of "International Scholarship" from Daniela Ciani Forza.

Professor Scharnhorst and I appreciate the assistance and resources provided us by the University of New Mexico and Indiana University and the thoughtful professionalism of Adam Hartz, Charles Brower, and their colleagues at Duke University Press in overseeing the production of this volume. Authors and publishers can help assure the thoroughness of AmLS coverage by directing offprints and review copies to me at 495 Lake Dornoch Drive, Pinehurst, NC 28374.