A thoroughly expanded and revised edition of the award-winning set, Encyclopedia of American Literature, Revised Edition is an extensive reference work that spans the entire scope of American literature, from the colonial period to the present. Now in five chronological volumes and arranged alphabetically within each volume, this comprehensive encyclopedia includes entries reflecting writers, works, literary movements, and more that high school students or undergraduates are likely to encounter. This major update boasts two new volumes and approximately 1,000 new entries. The majority of the new entries are n works of literature, with a particular emphasis on those most read by high school and college students. In addition, existing entries have been expanded and revised to reflect the latest scholarship. Bibliographies have been expanded and updated, and epigraphs have been added to the most important author entries. Regionally and culturally inclusive, entries on writers describe key life events, provide thumbnail descriptions of and critical reactions to their works, and discuss the writer's significance in the literary period. Also included are bibliographies listing key critical and biographical resources, an index for each volume, and a general list of entries for the entire set. A chronology in each volume puts the literature of the period in context. Explores America's literary beginnings and the connections between early American history and the nation's emerging literary tradition--covering the Puritans and their Bay Psalm Book, the Federalists and the United States Constitution, Benjamin Franklin, Phillis Wheatley, and more. Discusses the writers, works, genres, literarymovements, and related historical events of 19th-century America, from the romanticism of Walt Whitman. Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson to the realism of Mark Twain, Henry James, and William Dean Howells. Defines the evolution of a new American sensibility and brings the modern literary world alive, with entries of Frank Norris; Stephen Crane; Booker T. Washington; F. Scott Fitzgerald; Zora Neale Hurston; The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains; Absalom, Absalom ; and The Waste Land. Examines the emergence of new writers and voices that addressed the human experience--from New Criticism to Deconstruction, from the Beats and Flannery O'Connor to Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity Rainbow. Describes the evolving movements and writers that encompass today's literary history--from Alice Walker's The Color Purple to Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, from gay and lesbian literature and New Formalist poetry to cyberpunk and hypertext.