The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States - Hardcover

Five hundred scholars contributed to this multidisciplinary work, which is intended "for both general readers and specialized academic critics." All entries are signed, and the contributors are listed in a directory. The editors explain that they chose "writing" rather than "literature" because they wanted the book to reflect women's contributions in a wide range of genres. Chronological coverage ranges over four centuries. Entries are from 15 lines to several pages in length. See references help guide the reader to appropriate entries, and, within the text, asterisks are used to indicate cross-references.

Coverage includes entries that examine periods of time, such as Colonial Era Writing and Progressive Era Writing. Entries are here for ethnic literature, such as Irish American Writing and Southeast Asian-American Writing, as well as for regions such as New England and the South. Essays cover such genres as Humor, Slave Narratives, Poetry, Protest Writing, and Etiquette Books and Columns and also on writing in various academic and professional fields. Other entries examine such issues as Deconstruction and Feminism, Immigration, Pornography, and Whiteness. Th entries Aging, Daughters, and Romantic Love explore these topics as literary themes. There are entries for historical events, such as the Federal Writer's Project, and for various aspects of reading and publishing. Separate entries appear for more than 400 women, from Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley to Gloria Steinem, Louise Erdrich, and Amy Tan. Many more are mentioned in the various essays; the index lists page references for writers as diverse as Sara Paretsky, Ann Landers, Anna Quindlen, Virginia Hamilton, Marabel Morgan, and LaVyrle Spencer. With a few exceptions, such as Tillie Olsen's Silences, there are no entries for individual titles.

It is not entirely clear how decisions were made to have entries on some writers and not others. Southern writers Ellen Gilchrist and Lee Smith have their own entries, but Dorothy Allison, Jill McCorkle, and Josephine Humphries are covered in the essay Southern Women's Writing. There is no mention anywhere of Mary Lee Settle. There are entries for Jane Smiley and Terry McMillan, but Mona Simpson is discussed under Arab-American Writing, and Barbara Kingsolver is mentioned only as a poet, in the essay Translators.

Following the main body of the text are a "Timeline of U.S. Women's Writing," an extensive bibliography, and the index. The detailed index is crucial because of all of the information embedded in the text.

As the editors state in the preface, there are already "many excellent resources currently available" on women writers. Information about many of the writers covered here can also be found in Contemporary Authors, Modern American Women Writers (Scribner, 1991), and The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (Yale, 1990), to name just a few. What is unique about this volume is that it aims to explore the entire range of women's writing in a multidisciplinary framework. The reader will learn almost as much about current trends and issues in the disciplines of literature and women's studies as about women's writing itself. Recommended for most libraries, as an authoritative source to support inquiries in both fields.