Edmund Wilson's last collection of criticism, The Devils & Canon Barham, contains ten essays on Poets, Novelists, and Monsters Previously published in the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, Wilson's writing featured in this volume sees the critic returning to his roots and youth, with essays on his childhood love for The Ingoldsby Legends, the works of Hemingway, Eliot's The Waste Land, and ends with a piece on The Monsters of Bomarzo and by taking the Modern Language Association (MLA) to task.

The Triple Thinkers: Twelve Essays on Literary Subjects contains some of Edmund Wilson's most significant and brilliant writings on topics and authors ranging from Pushkin, A. E. Housman, Flaubert, Henry James, Marxism, poetry and more.

The death of Edmund Wilson precipitates an odyssey through the distorted literary landscape of America in search of Wilson's essence as the pre-eminent man of letters and the author's own creative wellsprings

Published in 1931, Axel's Castle was Edmund Wilson's first book of literary criticism--a landmark book that explores the evolution of the French Symbolist movement and considers its influence on six major twentieth-century writers: William Butler Yeats, Paul Valéry, T. S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein. As Alfred Kazin later wrote, "Wilson was an original, an extraordinary literary artist . . . He could turn any literary subject back into the personal drama it had been for the writer."

Realistic writers seek to render accurate representations of the world, and their novels contain authentic details and descriptions of their characters and settings. Like Realistic authors, Naturalistic ones similarly try to portray the world accurately, but they tend to depict the darker side of life. Realism was born in Europe in the nineteenth century and soon became popular in the United States, while Naturalism became prominent at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both traditions have continued in one form or another to the present day, and Realistic and Naturalistic novelists include some of America's most significant authors, such as Sherwood Anderson, Saul Bellow, Ambrose Bierce, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Ralph Ellison, and Jack London. This reference includes biographical and critical entries for more than 120 American Naturalistic and Realistic novelists. An introductory essay discusses the history of the Realistic and Naturalistic traditions, points to the difficulty of defining them, and surveys the many authors who have been associated with the two movements. The entries that follow are arranged alphabetically to facilitate use. Each includes basic biographical information and a narrative overview of the writer's educational background, professional career, and published works. The writer's works are briefly discussed in relation to the Realistic and Naturalistic traditions. Entries include primary and secondary bibliographies, and the volume closes with a list of works for further reading.

This volume contains 44 original essays on the role of periodicals in the United States and Canada. Over 120 magazines are discussed by expert contributors, completely reshaping our understanding of the construction and emergence of modernism.