"Up to this year I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject ... But I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak." Thus did Harriet Beecher Stowe announce her decision to begin work on what would become one of the most influential novels ever written. The subject she had hesitated to "meddle with" was slavery, and the novel, of course,...

Provides an in-depth critical introduction to the short stories of Jean Rhys. Includes a detailed analyses of every significant story, biographical information, a chronology of the artist's life and works, and a representative selection of critical responses.

With the amazing success of the Harry Potter series, interest in the author Joanne Kathleen (JK) Rowling has reached an unparalleled level. Now comes the completely updated New York Times bestseller J.K. Rowling: The Wizard Behind Harry Potter. From her time as a struggling single mother to her rise to stardom as the most successful children's book author ever, J.K. Rowling: The Wizard Behind Harry Potter is a highly dramatic, engrossing biography....

Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894), who contributed to Henry James's conception of his heroine Isabelle Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, was one of the most accomplished American writers of the nineteenth century. Yet today the best-known (and most-misunderstood) facts of her life are her relationship with James and her probable suicide in Venice. Anne Boyd Rioux uncovered new sources in writing this first full-length biography that evokes Woolson's...

Provides an in-depth critical introduction to the short stories of Bobbie Ann Mason. Includes a detailed analyses of every significant story, biographical information, a chronology of the artist's life and works, and a representative selection of critical responses.

A literature of black women's courage and experience is at the heart of Maya Angelou's writing. She has been called a national institution and the people's poet. It has been suggested that she has manifested an indomitable spirit and benign will in her most famous book, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". Enhanced by a chronology, bibliography, notes on the contributors, and an introductory essay by noted literary scholar Harold Bloom.