The Oxford Book Of American Literary Anecdotes

A companion volume to The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, this volume covers the whole range of American literary history from the 17th century to the present. Taken from biographies, letters, memoirs, and table-talk, the stories form an irreverent history of American literature.

In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.

A collection of nearly 500 stories covering 1300 years. Includes tall tales, portraits, and anecdotes about the men and women of English letters.

This volume offers a survey of American short fiction in 59 tales that combine classic works with 'different, unexpected gems', which invite readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Authors include: Amy Tan, Alice Adams, David Leavitt and Tim O'Brien.

This collection brings together 53 stories that span the history of Latin American literature and represent the most dazzling achievements in the form. It covers the entire history of Latin American short fiction, from the colonial period to present.

Presents a collection of fifty-nine familiar and unfamiliar stories by such writers as John Cheever, Ray Bradbury, Flannery O'Connor, Edmund White, and Richard Wright.

Glenda Abramson's informative introduction sets the scene for a powerful literary collection, the definitive anthology of a vibrant modern genre.