american novelists

A biographical-critical assessment of Hemingway as a man and of his work.

The autobiography of the fiction writer Eudora Welty whose honors include the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for fiction.

Recreates the life of America's first great writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and discusses his relations with his contemporaries.

Discusses the relationship that John Steinbeck had with his first wife, Carol.

Shares the author's frank observations about her daughter as well as her own thoughts and fears about having children and growing old, in a personal account that discusses her daughter's wedding and her feelings of failure as a parent.

Examines the life of American author Herman Melville, discussing his youth, the death of his father, his family's loss of affluence, and his work at sea and in other careers, and looks at how those early experiences influenced his writing.

Chronicles the tempestuous marriage between John Armstrong Chanler, heir to the Astor fortune, and Am?lie Rives, goddaughter of Robert E. Lee, discussing how the couple scandalized society during the Gilded Age with her morphine addiction and daring novels of female passion, and his eccentric behaviors and profligacy, which led to his being placed by his siblings in an insane asylum from which he escaped after four years.

Dee Brown, the author of several books about the American frontier tells about his own life, his fascination with the American West, and about the absurdities of twentieth-century existence. Includes a few black-and-white photographs.