Series Preface
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and then subentries on the author’s major works. After each subentry on a work is a set of questions for discussion and/or writing. Another set of broader discussion questions appears near the end of each author entry, followed by a bibliography. The entire five-volume set therefore contains more than 1000 discussion questions. These questions make up perhaps the most important and useful features of the set, encouraging further creative thought and helping students get started on their own writing. Many of the questions reference not only the subject literary work or author but also related works and authors, thus helping students to make additional literary connections, as emphasized by the literature standards. The authors and works included in the set were selected primarily from among those most popular in the high school classrooms—that is, those often featured in secondary-school literary anthologies and textbooks; those often appearing on age-appropriate reading lists; and those most often searched for in Facts On File’s online literary database Bloom’s Literature Online, used primarily in high schools. In addition, we have endeavored to include a range of writers from different backgrounds in all periods, as well as writers who, though not perhaps among the very most popular today, appear to have been unjustly neglected and are gaining in popularity. No selection could be perfect, and those writers favored by scholars and critics are not always as popular in the high school classroom, but the general editor and volumes editors have attempted to make the set’s coverage as useful to students as possible. Above all, we hope that this set serves not only to instruct but also to inspire students with the love of literature shared by all the editors and contributors who worked on this set. Patricia M. Gantt
he Student’s Encyclopedia of Great American Writers is a unique reference intended to help high school students meet standards for literature education and prepare themselves for literature study in college. It offers extensive entries on important authors, as well as providing additional interpretive helps for students and their teachers. The set has been designed and written in the context of the national standards for English language arts, created by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association, the two professional organizations that have the most at stake in high school language arts education (see http:// www.ncte.org/standards). The volume editors and many of the contributors to this set not only are university scholars but also have experience in secondary school literature education, ranging from working as readers of Advanced Placement examinations, to developing high school literature curricula, to having taught in high school English classrooms. Although the volume editors all have extensive experience as scholars and university professors, they all have strong roots in high school education and have drawn on their experience to ensure that entries are stylistically appealing and contain the necessary content for students. The set’s five volumes are organized chronologically, as many literature textbooks and anthologies are. This system is convenient for students and also facilitates cross-disciplinary study, increasingly common in high schools. For example, a section on the Civil War in history class might be accompanied by the study of Walt Whitman and Stephen Crane in English class. To help students find what they need, each volume contains two lists of all the authors included in the set: one organized chronologically and the other alphabetically. Within each volume, authors are presented alphabetically. Each author entry contains a biography
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