The wide range of neglected novels by 19th-century women has been mapped by Nina Baym, Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and About Women, 1820–70, 2nd ed. (1993); and Susan K. Harris, 19th-Century American Women’s Novels (1990). Feminist criticism of American fiction can be found in Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader (1978). Radical and ethnic writing between the two world wars has been studied by Walter B. Rideout, The Radical Novel in the United States, 1900–1954 (1956, reissued 1992); Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left (1961, reissued 1992); and Marcus Klein, Foreigners: The Making of American Literature, 1900–1940 (1981). The long history of African American literature has been explored by Robert A. Bone, The Negro Novel in America, rev. ed. (1965); Robert B. Stepto, From Behind the Veil, 2nd ed. (1991); and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey (1988). A succinct survey of Jewish American writing can be found in Allen Guttmann, The Jewish Writer in America (1971).
Critical studies of post-World War II fiction include Tony Tanner, City of Words (1971), valuable for understanding contemporary metafiction; Morris Dickstein, Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties (1977, reprinted 1997), and Leopards in the Temple (2002), which place postwar writers in their cultural context; Frederick R. Karl, American Fictions, 1940–1980 (1983), a comprehensive study; and Daniel Hoffman (ed.), Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing (1979), a collection of essays by major scholars. Studies of postwar poetry can be found in Charles Molesworth, The Fierce Embrace (1979); and Helen Vendler, Part of Nature, Part of Us: Modern American Poets (1980). Studies of modern American drama include Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years (1945, reprinted 1983), dealing with the 1930s; and C.W.E. Bigsby, A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama, 3 vol. (1982–85). Studies of 20th-century American critics can be found in Frank Lentricchia, After the New Criticism (1980); and Morris Dickstein, Double Agent: The Critic and Society (1992). Walter Blair James R. Giles Morris Dickstein