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Reviews 153 Carmen Bellamy, Dixon Wecter (spelled Wechter on the dust jacket), Leo Marx, John S. Tuckey, Hamlin L. Hill, and others. There are many collections of essays on the writings of Mark Twain. A recent one is New Essays on Huckleberry Finn (1985), edited by Louis J. Budd, a volume in the American Novel Series; another is Critical Essays on Mark Twain: 1910-1980 (1983), edited by Louis J. Budd, in the “Critical Essays in American Literature” Series. An earlier Prentice-Hall collection on Mark Twain’s work is still available. One wonders how good the market is for all of these collections, but perhaps the stellar reputations of Budd and Cady, whose editing of American Litera­ ture is commendable, will sell the volumes. The journal continues to publish the best essays in the discipline, concentrating upon writers from all regions of the nation. Today’s critics and readers may find some of the essays “outdated,” for the “older articles could benefit now from a minor revision, but the compilers have decided to reprint all of them exactly as they first appeared. In their time they met the standards of first-class research and judgment” (14). The complete series will be valuable for undergraduate libraries. DORYS CROW GROVER East Texas State University Frank Norris: Collected Letters. Edited by Jesse S. Crisler. (San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1986. 238 pages, $85 limited edition.) Frank Norris scholars have something that the Willa Cather ones do not —collections of letters. Since 1956, the Norris people have relied on Franklin Walker’s The Letters of Frank Norris, a gathering of the sixty-eight letters Walker could locate and all that were known at the time. Thirty-one others, in the following years, were published in the Book Club of California’s Quar­ terly News-Letter. Now, however, one finds a new collection of letters, edited by Jesse S. Crisler. This collection contains one hundred twenty-four letters, fifty-six not available to Walker and some unknown to previous perusers of Norris’correspondence. The work was originally conceived by James D. Hart as an expansion of Walker’s book and the letters found in the Quarterly News-Letter. Hart and Crisler were to be co-editors; subsequently, however, Hart had to withdraw from the project. Twenty-five new letters were found, and the task was altered from that of a simple updating to an edition containing editing and re-editing, expanded notes, corrected commentary, and additional data for each letter. Another helpful feature is the informative introduction appearing before each letter. This more elaborate creation by Crisler offers forty-one inscriptions, helpful adjuncts to the letters. Many of the latter, incidentally, appear here in print for the first time and also include informative notes. 154 Western American Literature The Norris correspondence presents interesting aspects of the author. The reader, for example, sees a man who capitalizes on acquaintances and friends in order to further his career. One also sees Norris, the compliant employee at Doubleday Page who—because he understands the power of a publisher—abides by the decisions of his superiors although he disagrees with the publishing machinations surrounding Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. In evidence, too, are letters to Hamlin Garland, letters to editors of journals and to the young Isaac Marcosson and the established William Dean Howells, and letters displaying the affectionate family man. Of course, one finds Norris’ “famous” letter, a thank-you to Lewis Gates for his encouragement and criticisms of McTeague while Norris was enrolled in English 22. Crisler offers an interesting explanatory note to this letter: Norris’only “A” at Harvard was in this course. This edition offers an informed view of the author, and will likely generate even greater attention for Frank Norris. VIRGIL ALBERTINI Northwest Missouri State University Zane Grey, Born to the West: A Reference Guide. By Kenneth W. Scott. (Boston: G. K. Hall &Co., 1979 [Reprinted, 1987], 179 pages, no price listed.) Bibliographies may not be quite as ephemeral as yesterday’s proverbial newspaper, but their usefulness does diminish steadily as time passes and schol­ arship continues, and are thus in constant need of updating. When Kenneth W. Scott’s bibliography of Zane...

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