A small selection of reference texts for literature students. For more, explore the P books in the reference section on Level 3 (PR - PS for English / American literature) of TJ Library.
The titles to the year 1900 include nearly all of the works found in Lyle H. Wright’s American Fiction: A Contribution Toward a Bibliography. Wright’s three-volume set—American Fiction, 1774–1850; American Fiction, 1851–1875; and American Fiction, 1876–1900—is widely considered the most comprehensive bibliography of American adult prose fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Readers in American realism and naturalism will be especially interested in the second and third parts of Wright’s collection. The collection includes novels, short stories, romances, fictitious biographies, travel accounts and sketches, allegories, and tract like tales typifying the development of American literature in a changing culture.
The titles published from 1901 to 1910 are gathered from major American fiction collections across the United States. Their inclusion follows the general selection criteria established by the Wright bibliography. The titles published between 1911 and 1920 are sourced from the William Charvat Collection of American Fiction at The Ohio State University Libraries.