Bibliography

Fried, Lewis and John Fierst. Jacob A. Riis: A Reference

Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977, 168 p.

A comprehensive listing of writings about Riis from 1899 to 1975, with extensive reference to his collected papers housed in the Library of Congress.

Biography

Goist, Park Dixon. "Social Workers, Reformers and the City: Jane Addams and Jacob Riis." In From Main Street to State Street: Town, City, and Community in America, pp. 80-93. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1977.

Presents Riis's career alongside that of his contemporary and fellow social reformer Jane Addams of Chicago, with a portrayal of both similarities and differences in their activities.

Madison, Charles A. "Preface to the Dove Edition." In How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, by Jacob Riis, pp. v-viii. New York: Dover Publications, 1971.

The story of the means by which Riis came to write How the Other Half Lives, along with brief comments on the photography and other aspects of his most well-known book.

Owre, J. Riis. "An Epilogue by J. Riis Owre." In The Making of an American, by Jacob A. Riis, pp. 285-237. London: MacMillan, 1970.

Riis's grandson offers his own, and other family members ', very personal recollections of Riis's last years.

Criticism

Bigelow, Donald N. "Introduction." In How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, by Jacob A. Riis, pp. vii-xiv. New York: Sagamore Press, 1957.

A brief portrayal of Riis as a vigorous reformer, with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of his most famous book.

Cordasco, Francisco. "Introduction." In Jacob Riis Revisited: Poverty and the Slum in Another Era, edited by Francisco Cordasco, pp. xiii-xxii. New York: Anchor Books, 1968.

Places Riis's work within a historical context defined both by the tradition of reform that preceded it, and by the "War on Poverty" of the 1960s.

Stange, Maren. "Jacob Riis and Urban Visual Culture: The Lantern Slide Exhibition as Entertainment and Ideology." Journal of Urban History 15, No. 3 (May 1989): 274-303. Examines Riis's photographic work in its historical and social context, and in the context of its actual presentation—not as printed pictures, but as slide shows with an accompanying lecture. Ten reproductions of his photos are included.

Twigg, Reginald. "The Performance Dimension of Surveillance: Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives." Text and Performance Quarterly 12, No. 4 (October 1992): 305-328.

With reference to concepts introduced by Michel Foucault, Twigg presents Riis's photographic and journalistic work as an act of surveillance and objectification of the lower classes on behalf of the bourgeoisie.

The following sources published by Gale contain additional coverage of Riis's life and career: Contemporary Authors, Vol. 113, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 23.