The Railroad In American Fiction

Nothing better represented the early spirit of American expansion than the railroad. Dominant in daily life as well as in the popular imagination, the railroad appealed strongly to creative writers. For many years, fiction of railroad life and travel was plentiful and varied. As the nineteenth century receded, the railroad's allure faded, as did railroad fiction. Today, it is hard to sense what the railroad once meant to Americans. The fiction of the railroad--often by railroaders themselves--recaptures that sense, and provides valuable insights on American cultural history. This extensively annotated bibliography lists and discusses in 956 entries novels and short stories from the 1840s to the present in which the railroad is important. Each entry includes plot and character description to help the reader make an informed decision on the source's merit. A detailed introduction discusses the history of railroad fiction and highlights common themes such as strikes, hoboes, and the roles of women and African-Americans. Such writers of "pure" railroad fiction as Harry Bedwell, Frank Packard, and Cy Warman are well represented, along with such literary artists as Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, and Ellen Glasgow. Work by minority writers, including Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, Frank Chin, and Toni Morrison, also receives close attention. An appendix organizes entries by decade of publication, and the work is indexed by subject and title.

Nothing better represented the early spirit of American expansion than the railroad. Dominant in daily life as well as in the popular imagination, the railroad appealed strongly to creative writers. For many years, fiction of railroad life and travel was plentiful and varied. As the nineteenth century receded, the railroad's allure faded, as did railroad fiction. Today, it is hard to sense what the railroad once meant to Americans. The fiction of the railroad--often by railroaders themselves--recaptures that sense, and provides valuable insights on American cultural history. This extensively annotated bibliography lists and discusses in 956 entries novels and short stories from the 1840s to the present in which the railroad is important. Each entry includes plot and character description to help the reader make an informed decision on the source's merit. A detailed introduction discusses the history of railroad fiction and highlights common themes such as strikes, hoboes, and the roles of women and African-Americans. Such writers of "pure" railroad fiction as Harry Bedwell, Frank Packard, and Cy Warman are well represented, along with such literary artists as Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, and Ellen Glasgow. Work by minority writers, including Jean Toomer, Richard Wright, Frank Chin, and Toni Morrison, also receives close attention. An appendix organizes entries by decade of publication, and the work is indexed by subject and title.

The (Underground) Railroad in African American Literature offers a brief history of the African American experience of the railroad and the uses of railroad history by a wide assortment of twentieth-century African American poets, dramatists, and fiction writers. Moreover, this literary history examines the ways in which trains, train history, and legendary train figures such as Harriet Tubman and John Henry have served as literary symbols. This repeated use of the train symbol and associated train people in twentieth-century African American literature creates a sense of literary continuity and a well-established aesthetic tradition all too frequently overlooked in many traditional approaches to the study of African American writing. The metaphoric possibilities associated with the railroad and the persistence of the train as a literary symbol in African American writing demonstrates the symbol's ongoing literary value for twentieth-century African American writers - writers who invite their readers to look back at the various points in history where America got off track, and who also dare to invite their readers to imagine an alternate route for the future.

A Brief Survey Of Railroad Fiction, Poetry, Songs, Biography, Essays, Travel And Drama In The English Language, Particularly Emphasizing Its Place In American Literature.

THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN FICTION Accessibly structured with entries on important historical contexts, central issues, key texts and the major writers, this Handbook provides an engaging overview of twentieth-century American fiction. Featured writers range from Henry James and Theodore Dreiser to contemporary figures such as Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Pynchon, and Sherman Alexie, and analyses of key works include The Great Gatsby, Lolita, The Color Purple, and The Joy Luck Club, among others. Relevant contexts for these works, such as the impact of Hollywood, the expatriate scene in the 1920s, and the political unrest of the 1960s are also explored, and their importance discussed. This is a stimulating overview of twentieth-century American fiction, offering invaluable guidance and essential information for students and general readers.

Railway travel has had a significant influence on modern theatre's sense of space and time. Early in the 20th century, breakthroughs--ranging from F.T. Marinetti's futurist manifestos to epic theatre's use of the treadmill--explored the mechanical rhythms and perceptual effects of railway travel to investigate history, technology, and motion. After World War II, some playwrights and auteur directors, from Armand Gatti to Robert Wilson to Amiri Baraka, looked to locomotion not as a radically new space and time but as a reminder of obsolescence, complicity in the Holocaust, and its role in uprooting people from their communities. By analyzing theatrical representations of railway travel, this book argues that modern theatre's perceptual, historical and social productions of space and time were stretched by theatre's attempts to stage the locomotive.