TCLC is designed to serve as an introduction to authors who died between 1900 and 1999 and to the most significant interpretations of these author’s works. Volumes published from 1978 through 1999 included authors who died between 1900 and 1960. The great poets, novelists, short story writers, playwrights, and philosophers of the period are frequently studied in high school and college literature courses. In organizing and reprinting the vast amount of critical material written on these authors, TCLC helps students develop valuable insight into literary history, promotes a better understanding of the texts, and sparks ideas for papers and assignments. Each entry in TCLCpresents a comprehensive survey on an author’s career or an individual work of literature and provides the user with a multiplicity of interpretations and assessments. Such variety allows students to pursue their own interests; furthermore, it fosters an awareness that literature is dynamic and responsive to many different opinions.

Every fourth volume of TCLC is devoted to literary topics. These topics widen the focus of the series from the individual authors to such broader subjects as literary movements, prominent themes in twentieth-century literature, literary reaction to political and historical events, significant eras in literary history, prominent literary anniversaries, and the literatures of cultures that are often overlooked by English-speaking readers.

TCLC is designed as a companion series to Thomson Gale’s Contemporary Literary Criticism, (CLC) which reprints commentary on authors who died after 1999. Because of the different time periods under consideration, there is no duplication of material between CLC and TCLC.

A TCLC entry consists of the following elements:

served. Reproduced by permission.—Chadwick-Joshua, Jocelyn. From The Jim Dilemma: Reading Race in Huckleberry Finn. University Press of Mississippi, 1998. Copyright © 1998 by the University Press of Mississippi. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Hindus, Milton. From A Reader’s Guide to Marcel Proust. Syracuse University Press, 2001. First published by Farrar Straus and Cudahy, 1962. Copyright © 1962, renewed 1990 by Milton Hindus. Reproduced by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.—Lester, Julius. From “Morality and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” in Satire or Evasion?: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn. Edited by James S. Leonard, Thomas A. Tenney and Thadious M. Davis. Duke University Press, 1992. Copyright © 1992, Julius Lester. Reproduced by permission of the author.— Lingus, Alphonso. From “Seppuku,” in Literature as Philosophy. Philosophy as Literature. Edited by Donald G. Marshall. University of Iowa Press, 1987. Copyright © 1987 by the University of Iowa. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of the author.—Mengay, Donald H. From “Body/Talk: Mishima, Masturbation, and Self-Performativity,” in Genealogy and Literature. Edited by Lee Quinby. University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Copyright © 1995 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Rosengarten, Frank. From The Writings of the Young Marcel Proust (1885-1900): An Ideological Critique. Peter Lang, 2001. Copyright © 2001 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Skandera-Trombley, Laura E. From Mark Twain in the Company of Women. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Copyright © 1994 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Sloane, David E. E. From Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: American Comic Vision. Twayne Publishers, 1988. Copyright © 1988 by G. K. Hall & Co. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Gale Group.—Thiher, Allen. From Fiction Rivals Science: The French Novel from Balzac to Proust. University of Missouri Press, 2001. Copyright © 2001 by the Curators of the University of Missouri. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Washburn, Dennis. From “Structures of Emptiness: Kitsch, Nihilism, and the Inauthentic in Mishima’s Aesthetics,” in Studies in Modern Japanese Literature: Essays and Translations in Honor of Edwin McClellan. Edited by Dennis Washburn and Alan Tansman. Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1997. Copyright © 1997 by the Regents of the University of Michigan. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Wieck, Carl F. From Refiguring Hucklebery Finn. The University of Georgia Press, 2000. Copyright © 2000 by the University of Georgia Press. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.

Thomson Gale Literature Product Advisory Board

The members of the Thomson Gale Literature Product Advisory Board—reference librarians from public and academic library systems—represent a cross-section of our customer base and offer a variety of informed perspectives on both the presentation and content of our literature products. Advisory board members assess and define such quality issues as the relevance, currency, and usefulness of the author coverage, critical content, and literary topics included in our series; evaluate the layout, presentation, and general quality of our printed volumes; provide feedback on the criteria used for selecting authors and topics covered in our series; provide suggestions for potential enhancements to our series; identify any gaps in our coverage of authors or literary topics, recommending authors or topics for inclusion; analyze the appropriateness of our content and presentation for various user audiences, such as high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, librarians, and educators; and offer feedback on any proposed changes/enhancements to our series. We wish to thank the following advisors for their advice throughout the year.