P 839

The portable American realism reader ed.: J. Nagel, T. Quirk — New York, NY Penguin Books 1997 — 591p.. — The Portable American Realism Reader collects forty-seven of the best stories published in the United States between 1865 and 1918—the most celebrated period of short fiction in American literary history. This great flowering of talent includes such classic stories as Mark Twain's "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog", Bret Harte's "The Luck of Roaring Camp", Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", and Henry James's "The Beast in the Jungle". The volume's editors have also expanded the sweep of American Realism to embrace works by less well known African-American, Asian-American, and Native-American writers. In addition, there is a special emphasis on the contributions of women writers to this crucial period of American letters, with stories by Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Austin, among others. This unique Viking Portable Library edition includes substantial introductory essays on the historical and literary context of the "Age of Realism," along with a useful chronology, critical headnotes, and minibiographies for each of the authors. ISBN:  9780140268300