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I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before. It is evidence of Twain's greatness that these last two sentences from Huckleberry Finn still say something fundamental about the American experience. For instance, in the 1990s, they are re-enacted in the closing moments of the movie Thelma and Louise , a film which reworks Huckleberry Finn 's themes of fleeting love, exploitation, betrayal, injustice, and murderous violence all lurking in the promise of New World space. The missed opportunity is tragic when it is not comic. It was the originality and centrality of Twain that William Dean Howells had in mind when he described Twain as sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature. By the 1920s, however, Van Wyck Brooks found little to celebrate in Twain's literary career. In a famous American critical contest, he was answered by Bernard DeVoto, for whom no other writer contemporary with Twain touched American life in so many places. Volume I offers three essential biographies by William Dean Howells, Albert Bigelow Paine, and Twain's daughter, Clara Clemens. Volume II contains contemporary reviews and responses to Twain's work, arranged chronologically by title and concludes with a large section of assessments by approximately forty other creative writers. Volume III presents critical essays on all of Twain's essential works, grouped chronologically by title. Volume IV offers a twentieth-century overview of Twain, covering central themes such as The Frontier and the West; Mark Twain's Humor; The South, Slavery and Race; and Mark Twain and Sexuality. It concludes with a number of general essays.

The Bronte sisters have received an enormous amount of critical attention, given their short lives and relatively slender literary production. As a group and individually the Brontes' works resist being swept away by any one critical approach. They defied conventional ideas of the novel genre and have always made it difficult for critics to categorize them. The aim of these volumes is to emphasize both the diversity and difficulty of critical approaches to the works. This set includes: Volume I: Recollections, Obituaries, General Nineteenth-Century Studies, Writers on the Brontes Volume II: Assessments of Juvenilia, poetry, Agnes Grey and the Tenant of Wilfell Hall. Volume III: Assessments of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Volume IV: Assessments of Shirley, Vilette, and The Professor; Critical Essays on the Brontes; Twentieth-Century Comparative Studies.

This collection presents the best and most interesting criticism taken from the huge mass of critical material that has been written about Austen's work. Contents: Along with the usual critical apparatus, Volume I includes sections on Austen's life, publications, and the contemporary critical response. This is followed by nineteenth-century reviews and articles and concludes with a section of Writers on Jane Austen. Volume II focuses on essays on her social and intellectual background and twentieth-century studies of her works as a whole. Volumes III and IV are devoted to criticism of the individual works.

Henry James is one of the most admired and least appreciated figures in American writing. In a prolific writing career, James is a key transitional figure, not only chronologically between such writers as Jane Austen and George Eliot and the modernists such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, but also geographically and culturally. His characters, like himself, move between two very different cultures representative of different values. The choice of material in this outstanding collection attempts both to guage the changing response to James and also to establish how consistent his stature as a writer has been. Volume One offers a series of memories of James from friends, critics, novelists, and poets. Volume Two presents contemporary reviews and views of James's work from both the United States and Britain, while Volume Three offers a twentieth century overview reflecting the range of responses to James over time. Finally, Volume Four presents a series of twentieth century interpreations to the major works. _

This set offers a wide range of primary source material spanning several centuries of religious experience in the United States. The material is grouped thematically and chronologically with a critical apparatus which includes a substantial introductory essay giving an overview of the subject, a chronology, and bibliographies.