The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage: A Reader's Companion to the Writers and Their Works from Antiquity to the Present

From Library Journal
The rerelease of The Gay & Lesbian Literary Heritage-published in 1995 by Holt-is to be celebrated for at least bringing back into print this best-ever, single-volume reference on the subject. Summers (English, Univ. of Michigan) presents both biographical and topical entries with an international scope, though the emphasis is on American and English literature. The writing is informative but also provocative, critical and yet consistently accurate and inclusive in the selection of works discussed. Unfortunately, of more than 380 entries, just 32 are new, and very few of the others have been revised or had their bibliographies updated. Allen Ginsberg's entry now has a death date and one new citation, but the text is untouched; the nine-column entry on AIDS literature, which previously delineated the most significant works year by year through 1994, adds just two scant paragraphs on the last seven years while revising none of the earlier text; and the entry on opera remains unchanged, thereby failing to note recent operas that for the first time deal overtly with gay themes (e.g., Stewart Wallace's Harvey Milk and Carla Lucero's Wuornos). Libraries that don't own the first edition or have worn it out should purchase this topnotch work despite the flaws, but those that still have the original can wait and hope for a fuller update. Presenting biographical entries on nearly 450 writers, Who's Who in Lesbian & Gay Writing differs from most of the previous two dozen titles in Routledge's series, which deal with historical figures or fictional characters (e.g., the Old Testament, the Greek world, military history). The significance of this distinction becomes clear when reading Griffin's entries, which are crammed with facts but offer little literary analysis. The entries lack the citations to critical secondary sources that one might expect in a who's who of writers as well as lists of significant publications, forcing Griffin to enumerate book titles and publication years in the text proper. She further dulls the text by emphasizing the names and dates of personal relationships over the qualities of the authors' writing. To be fair, one encyclopedist could not be expected to demonstrate critical knowledge of so many writers in the way that a biblical scholar might be able to expatiate on the personages of the Old Testament. The book is most successful in its selection of worthy subjects, something Griffin notes can be particularly problematic given the contested sexuality of some writers. The choices are all the more admirable given the book's breadth, encompassing writers from all places and all periods. Still, most of the subjects here can already be found in other sources, making the only justification for this publication a resounding emphasis on the homosexual slant of an author's life or work-an approach Griffin loses among the minutiae of mundane facts. Recommended only for large subject collections.Eric Bryant, "Library Journal" Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Finding criticism on gay and lesbian literature and information about gay and lesbian authors is, while infinitely easier than 10 years ago, still challenging. This reader's companion provides an overview of the whole field. Summers is a professor of English at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and the author of numerous articles and books, including Gay Fictions, Wilde to Stonewall: Studies in a Homosexual Literary Tradition (1990).Heritage contains nearly 400 alphabetically arranged essays by more than 150 scholars. These are of three types: overviews of national or ethnic literatures (e.g., African Literatures, Jewish-American Literature), topical and genre entries (e.g., Modernism, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Young Adult Literature), and essays on individual authors, not all of them gay or lesbian. The more than 200 entries on authors tend to be brief; the national and topical entries are from four to a dozen pages in length. All entries conclude with bibliographies. Frequent cross-references are useful for locating related topics or further discussions of particular authors. An index notes all mentions of authors and topics.This book does not make the criteria for inclusion explicit. As noted in the introduction, it is not comprehensive and the editor admits a bias in favor of English and American literary traditions, though all parts of the world and all time periods are touched on. Examples of authors omitted include Romaine Brooks, Bryher, Robert Chesley, Cheryl Clark, Melvin Dixon, David B. Feinberg, Charles Henri Ford, Lee Lynch, John Osborne, and David Zane.Spanning antiquity (Plato) to the present (Fierstein, Harvey), this volume covers more territory than any other compilation to date. Sharon Malinowski's Gay & Lesbian Literature [RBB Jl 94] is a compilation of biographical and critical information on more than 200 authors who have figured prominently in gay and lesbian literature since 1900. It also does not profess to be comprehensive. However, criteria for inclusion are clearly stated: the gay and lesbian thematic content of a writer's work and not sexual identity.The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage will contribute to a greater understanding of the multifaceted enterprise we call literature. Recommended for public and academic libraries.


Book Description
The revised edition of The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage is a reader's companion to this impressive body of work. It provides overviews of gay and lesbian presence in a variety of literatures and historical periods; in-depth critical essays on major gay and lesbian authors in world literature; and briefer treatments of other topics and figures important in appreciating the rich and varied gay and lesbian literary traditions. Included are nearly 400 alphabetically arranged articles by more than 175 scholars from around the world. New articles in this volume feature authors such as Michael Cunningham, Tony Kushner, Anne Lister, Kate Millet, Jan Morris, Terrence McNally, and Sarah Waters; essays on topics such as Comedy of Manners and Autobiography; and overviews of Danish, Norwegian, Philippines, and Swedish literatures; as well as updated and revised articles and bibliographies.


About the Author
Claude J. Summers is William E. Stirton Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Michigan, Dearborn. He has written widely on 17th-century English literature; written book-length critical studies on Christopher Marlowe, E. M. Forster, and Christopher Isherwood; and is the author of Gay Fictions: Wilde to Stonewall. He received the Lambda Literary Award for the first edition of The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage.


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The rerelease of The Gay & Lesbian Literary Heritage-published in 1995 by Holt-is to be celebrated for at least bringing back into print this best-ever, single-volume reference on the subject. Summers (English, Univ. of Michigan) presents both biographical and topical entries with an international scope, though the emphasis is on American and English literature. The writing is informative but also provocative, critical and yet consistently accurate and inclusive in the selection of works discussed. Unfortunately, of more than 380 entries, just 32 are new, and very few of the others have been revised or had their bibliographies updated. Allen Ginsberg's entry now has a death date and one new citation, but the text is untouched; the nine-column entry on AIDS literature, which previously delineated the most significant works year by year through 1994, adds just two scant paragraphs on the last seven years while revising none of the earlier text; and the entry on opera remains unchanged, thereby failing to note recent operas that for the first time deal overtly with gay themes (e.g., Stewart Wallace's Harvey Milk and Carla Lucero's Wuornos). Libraries that don't own the first edition or have worn it out should purchase this topnotch work despite the flaws, but those that still have the original can wait and hope for a fuller update. Presenting biographical entries on nearly 450 writers, Who's Who in Lesbian & Gay Writing differs from most of the previous two dozen titles in Routledge's series, which deal with historical figures or fictional characters (e.g., the Old Testament, the Greek world, military history). The significance of this distinction becomes clear when reading Griffin's entries, which are crammed with facts but offer little literary analysis. The entries lack the citations to critical secondary sources that one might expect in a who's who of writers as well as lists of significant publications, forcing Griffin to enumerate book titles and publication years in the text proper. She further dulls the text by emphasizing the names and dates of personal relationships over the qualities of the authors' writing. To be fair, one encyclopedist could not be expected to demonstrate critical knowledge of so many writers in the way that a biblical scholar might be able to expatiate on the personages of the Old Testament. The book is most successful in its selection of worthy subjects, something Griffin notes can be particularly problematic given the contested sexuality of some writers. The choices are all the more admirable given the book's breadth, encompassing writers from all places and all periods. Still, most of the subjects here can already be found in other sources, making the only justification for this publication a resounding emphasis on the homosexual slant of an author's life or work-an approach Griffin loses among the minutiae of mundane facts. Recommended only for large subject collections.-Eric Bryant, "Library Journal" Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.


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