Originally published in 1972, A Literary History of Iowa, which features writers published in book form between 1856 and the late 1960s, returns to print. One of Iowa's native sons, Ellis Parker Butler, once said that in Iowa 12 dollars were spent for fertilizer each time a dollar was spent for literature. Many readers will be surprised to learn from this book the extent of Iowa's distinguished literary past---the many prizes and praise received by her authors. To those already familiar with Iowa's credits, A Literary History of Iowa will be a nostalgic and informative delight. During the 1920s and 1930s, Iowa had good claim to recognition as the literary capital of the country. Clarence Andrews says that as he grew up he knew a host of Iowa writers. "I also knew that Iowa was winning a diproportionate share of the Pulitzer Prizes---Hamlin Garland, Margaret Wilson, Susan Glaspell, Frank Luther Mott, "Ding" Darling, Clark Mollenhoff. It was winning its share or more of prizes offered by publishers---and its authors' books were being selected as Book-of-the-Month and Literary Guild books. I knew too about Carl Van Vechten as part of that avant-garde group of midwest exiles---including Fitzgerald, Anderson, and Hemingway."A Literary History of Iowa looks at Iowans who knew and cared for the state---people who wrote poetry, plays, musical plays, novels, and short stories about Iowa subjects, Iowa ideas, Iowa people. These writers often have dealt with such themes as the state's history, the rise of technology and its impact on the community, provincialism and exploitation, the problems of personal adjustment, and the family and the community. John T. Frederick, whose own books are paramount in Iowa's literary history, has pointed to Iowa's special contributions to the literature of rural life in saying that no other state can show its portrayal in "fiction so rich, so varied, and so generally sound as can Iowa."

Maud (English, Simon Fraser U.) offers a narrative account of the life and work of poet Charles Olson, focusing on the poet's lifelong reading material as a basis for understanding his work. Drawing on an annotated listing of his library, as well as his childhood books and poetry by his contemporaries, he links the books to the poet's intellectual and poetic development at each stage of his career. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"These seven stories discover something of what lies beneath the ordinary surfaces of decent people," says George P. Elliott in his introduction to this volume. "Mr. Cassill's characters are for the most part," he continues, "white respectable Middle-Western Protestants, and their way of life is lethal enough. But his heresy is to treat them as possible human beings who in fact do go on living as we live - dreadfully troubled but possible, human, living." Cassill obviously incorporates in his best work all the uncommon qualities listed by Elliott, plus quite a few more: psychological precision, sociological understanding and philosophical thrust, not to mention a command of organic form in the short story and a remarkable range of flexible styles.

Anthology includes selsctions from Djuna Barnes, Paul Bowles, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Goodman, Jack Kerouac, Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton, Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen, Ezra Pound, John Crowe Ransom, Kenneth Rexroth, Delmore Schwartz, Gertrude Stein, Nathanael West, Tennessee Williams, William Carlos Williams and Yvor Winters, among others.