From a vantage point of 100 years on, readers can, with this book, look back on the excitement and ferment of the turbulent decade of the "Gay Nineties" and find the seeds of the joys and anguish, the excesses and successes of the 20th century. Whether for browsing or research, readers will reap rewards from this alphabetical compendium of the persons, events, institutions and ideas of the era. Taking the emergence of modern American literature, with realism and naturalism replacing romanticism as his point of view, Robert L.Gale profiles 95 writers of classic and popular literature, journalism, and criticism, 140 individual works, and 30 magazines, all set against the background of America thrusting itself into the 20th century and evolving as a world power. Also represented in over 500 entries are painters and politicians, social workers and industrialists, composers and inventors, explorers and evangelists, as well as topics like crime, immigration, medicine, motion pictures, sports, and universities and landmark events like the Panic of 1893, the Spanish American War, and the World's Columbian Exposition.
Fully cross-referenced and indexed, the dictionary includes a chronology of events from 1888 to 1901, an appendix classifying entries on key people in occupational and other categories, and an extensive bibliography.
Author Biography:
ROBERT L. GALE is Emeritus Professor of American Literature at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of many books and articles on a range of American literary and cultural figures, including Francis Parkman, John Hay, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Thomas Crawford, Matt Braun, Luke Short, Will Henry, and Louis L'Amour. He has published two previous reference books with Greenwood Press, A Henry James Encyclopedia (1989) and A Nathaniel Hawthorne Encyclopedia (1991).
