Further reading: Good biographies are David Magarshack, Chekhov: A Life; Ernest J. Simmons, Chekhov: A Biography; Ronald A. Hingley, A New Life of Anton Chekhov; Henri Troyat, Chekhov, which is both recent and highly readable. See also M.J. Valency, The Breaking String.
Edith Wharton—Ali of her major novйis are in print from Scribners; there are also Penguin editions of most. The Library of Amйricas volume of selected novйis includes the three that we
recommend, plus The Reef. See also The Collected Short Stories of Edith Wharton, ed. R.W.B. Lewis (Scribners), and Edith Wharton Novellas and Other Writings, ed. Cynthia Griffin Wolff (Library of America).
Further reading: The standard life is R.W.B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography. See also Millicent Bell, Edith Wharton and Henry James, and the same authors The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton; Louis Auchincloss, Edith Wharton: A Woman in Her Time; Gloria Erlich, The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton; Katharine Joslin, Edith Wharton; Cynthia Griffin Wolff, A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton; and a pictorial biography by Eleanor Dwight, Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life.
William Butler Yeats—The best edition (hardbound): The Poems ofW.B. Yeats, ed. Richard Finneran (Macmillan). Through Collier, Macmillan also issues Eleven Plays, The Autobiography, and Essays and Introductions. Last Poems (Aurora); Selected Poems (Macmillan).
Further reading: A standard biography is J.M. Hone's William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). See also: T.R. Henn, The Lonely Tower; Richard Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks; Douglas Archibald, Yeats; Denis Donoghue, Yeats; Harold Bloom, Yeats and R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life; essays on Yeats in Arland Usshers Three Great Irishmen; Edmund Wilson, AxeVs Castle; T.S. Eliot's essay in On Poetry and Poets; Keith Alldritt, W.B. Yeats: Man and Milieu.
Natsume Soseki—Kokoro, tr. Edwin McClellan (Regnery); Botchan, tr. Umeji Sasaki (Charles E. Tuttle).
Further reading: Takeo Doi, The Psychological World of Natsume Soseki; Edwin McClellan, Two Japanese Novelists: Soseki and Toson; Beongcheon Yu, Natsume Soseki; Van C. Gessel, Three Modern Novelists: Soseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata.
Marcel Proust—The complete "definite Plйiade edition" of Remembrance of Things Past, tr. C.K Scott-Moncrieff, Terence Kilmartin, and Andreas Mayor, is published by Random House in three volumes. The seven parts are also available separately.
Further reading: An excellent brief biography is Andrй Maurois's Proust. Another is Richard H. Barkers Mareei Proust. George D. Painters Mareei Proust (2 vols.) is a detailed, compre- hensive, well-researched classic biography. For a brief but mas- terly appreciation, see Edmund Wilson's AxeVs Castle. See also: Germaine Brйe, Mareei Proust and Deliverance from Time; and the same authors The World of Mareei Proust; Roger Shattuck, Proust's Binoculars: A Study of Memory, Time, and Recognition in A la rйcherche du temps perdu; Samuel Beckett, Proust; Julia
Kristeva, Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature, difficult but full of penetrating insights.
Robert Frost—Holt, Rinehart publishes Collected Poems in hardback and Selected Poems in paperback. Washington Square Press has Untermeyers edition, the New Enlarged Anthology of Robert Frosfs Poems. You may come upon other paperback editions. The Library of America has a one-volume Collected Poems, Prose т- Plays.
Further reading: Lawrence Thompson's Robert Frost (3 vols.) is official but not reverent. Qualifying Thompson's interpretation of Frost's character is W.H. Pritchard's Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered. See also: E.S. Sergeant, Robert Frost: The Trial by Existence; Sidney Cox, A Swinger of Birches: A Portrait of Robert Frost; R.L. Cook, The Dimensions of Robert Frost; R.A. Brower, The Poetry of Robert Frost; Richard Poirier, Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing.
Thomas Mann—Modern Library and Vintage offer The Magic Mountain in the standard translation by H.T. Lowe-Poreter. Knopf has a new translation by John E. Woods. Vintage also has Buddenbrooks and Doctor Faustus, both well worth reading, as is Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories (Vintage).
Further reading: Hans Buergin and Hans-Otto Mayer, Thomas Mann: A Chronicle of His Life; Richard Winston, Thomas Mann: The Making of an Artist, 1875-1911. The reader may find useful commentary in The Stature of Thomas Mann, ed. by Charles Neider; J.G. Brennan's Thomas Manns World; Clifton Fadiman, Reading Vve Liked.
E.M. Forster—A Passage to нndia: Harvest. Howards End, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, and Where Angels Fear to Tread are ali in Vintage. The interesting Aspects of the Novel is in Harvest. His memoir of youthful employment as a secretary in нndia, The Hill of Devi, is out of print and hard to find, but worth looking for.
Further reading: Lionel Trilling's E.M. Forster is the best study. The authorized biography is by P.N. Furbank. See also: Rose Macaulay, The Writings of E.M. Forster; Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth and Other Essays; F.C. Crews, E.M. Forster: The Perils of Humanism; Wilfred Stone, The Cave and the Mountain.
Lu HsЬn—There are many translations; three good editions are William Lyell, tr., Diary of a Madman and Other Stories (U. Hawaii Press); Ah Q and Others: Selected Stories of Lu Hsьn, tr. by Chi-chen Wang (Greenwood); and Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, tr., Lu Xun: Selected Works (Foreign Languages Press, Beijing).
Further reading: Leo Ou-fan Lee, Voicesfrom the Iron House: A Study ofLu Xun; William Lyell, Lu Hsьris Vision ofReality.
James Joyce—The Ulysses to own is the Vintage "corrected text" edition. If you're determined to try the difficult Finnegans Wake, it's in Penguin, which also publishes The Portable James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Dubliners.
Further reading: The definitive biography is Richard Ellmann's James Joyce. Excellent general studies: Harry Levin, James Joyce: A Criticai Introduction; W.Y. Tindall, A Readers Guide to James Joyce; Anthony Burgess, Re Joyce. Edmund Wilson's brilliant esti- mate is in his AxeVs Castle. A good recent study is John Bishop, Joyce's Book of the Dead. On Ulysses see Stuart Gilbert, James Joyces Ulysses; H. Blamires, The Bloomsday Book; Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses; Hugh Kenner, Ulysses. If you attempt Finnegans Wake, take along Campbell and Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake.