Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, and a writer lauded both for his craft and his principles, wrote The Job as a statement of female empowerment, and self-determination over societal expectation. Written in the early years of the 1900s Lewis' central character, highly unusual for the era, is a woman, Una Golden, who gains work in an exclusively male world of commercial real estate. Golden struggles for the recognition of her male peers while balancing romantic and work life; she marries, divorces, continues to work hard and finally emerges triumphant on her own terms. Flame Tree 451 presents a new series, The Foundations of Feminist Fiction. The early 1900s saw a quiet revolution in literature dominated by male adventure heroes. Both men and women moved beyond the norms of the male gaze to write from a different gender perspective, sometimes with female protagonists, but also expressing the universal freedom to write on any subject whatsoever. Each book features a brand new biography and a new glossary of Literary, Gothic and Victorian terms.

In 1924 DuBose Heyward (1885-1940) was a businessman absorbed in his Charleston heritage. One year later he was the world-famous author of Porgy, the first major southern novel to portray blacks without condescension. Just a decade later George Gershwin had transformed Heyward's book into an opera that would become one of the most enduring masterworks of American music.As a young man Heyward was immersed in the Gullah culture of his city. Especially through his mother, a performer and interpreter of Gullah life in folktale and song, he discovered the gateway into the fascinating world he would immortalize in the characters of Porgy, Bess, Maria, and other denizens of Charleston's Catfish Row. In this full-dress biography Heyward is seen for the first time as a southerner who overcame social restrictions to perceive humanity beyond the class and color lines. Drawing on nearly fifty years of private papers and on previously untapped personal correspondence, this book places Heyward in the social and cultural framework of his time and marks the power and empathy of his extraordinary achievement. Until now, Heyward's role in the writing of George Gershwin's acclaimed opera Porgy and Bess has remained almost unknown. He wrote the libretto singlehandedly, and nearly half the arias are by him. Long thought to have been merely an assistant to Gershwin, he actually was involved in most phases of the production. Although the opera eclipsed Heyward's book, it was Gershwin's foundation stone. Mainly known today as the author of Porgy, Heyward was a versatile artist equally at ease with verse, short fiction, novels, plays, and Hollywood screenwriting. He and his wife Dorothy helped to energize the nascent black theater movement in New York. A cofounder of the Poetry Society of South Carolina, the first regional poetry circle in America, Heyward became a vigorous promoter of southern writing that was to peak in the great southern literary renaissance. Pulled by tradition into a way of life he did not completely accept, he developed a growing social conscience through writing. He began as a social conservative but ended his life as a staunch progressive committed to the advancement of African Americans.

The fictional characters of Porgy, Bess, Black Maria, Sportin' Life, and the other Gullah denizens of Catfish Row have attained a mythic status and have become inextricably identified with Charleston. This novel is the story of Porgy, a crippled street-beggar in the black tenement. Unwashed and un-wanted, he lives just on the edge of subsistence and trusts his fate to the gods and chance. His one shining moment is his pursuit of Bess, whom he wins and then loses during one summer of passion and violence.

This story by DuBose Heyward is, of course, the origin of George Gershwin's acclaimed folk opera "Porgy and Bess." Heyward created Porgy with such sympathy, honesty, and insight that Porgy has ascended into the pantheon of the universal.

This Banner Books edition includes an afterword by James M. Hutchisson, Heyward's biographer, who places "Porgy" in its social and historical context and shows how the novel revolutionized American literature. Heyward had no literary training, and he wrote "Porgy" while working as an insurance agent. It is ironic that this deeply feeling author was a member of the Charleston aristocracy which regarded African Americans as little more than servants. Indeed, the tightly knit black community is celebrated in the novel and is contrasted with Charleston's white culture, which in Heyward's view lacked the vitality and rich social ethos of the Gullahs.

In 1927, even before Gershwin transformed the novel with a musical score, the book was successfully dramatized for the New York stage. The production revolutionized the black theater movement with its casting of black actors.

"Porgy," published in 1925, proved to be on the leading edge of the great southern renaissance, in which works by William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and others would depict black characters of increasing emotional and psychological complexity. The novel has gone through seven editions and has been translated into French, Gullah, and German, among other languages and dialects.

DuBose Heyward (1885-1940) published "Porgy" to tremendous critical acclaim and financial success. He wrote poetry, short fiction, plays, and screenplays. James M. Hutchisson is a professor of English at The Citadel in Charleston.

Paul Auster (b. 1947) is one of the most critically acclaimed and intensely studied authors in America today. His varied career as a novelist, poet, translator, and filmmaker has attracted scholarly scrutiny from a variety of critical perspectives. The steadily rising arc of his large readership has made him something of a popular culture figure with many appearances in print interviews, as well as on television, the radio, and the internet. Auster's best known novel may be his first, "City of Glass" (1985), a grim and intellectually puzzling mystery that belies its surface image as a "detective novel" and goes on to become a profound meditation on transience and mortality, the inadequacies of language, and isolation. Fifteen more novels have followed since then, including "The Music of Chance, Moon Palace, The Book of Illusions, and The Brooklyn Follies." He has, in the words of one critic, "given the phrase 'experimental fiction' a good name" by fashioning bona fide literary works with all the rigor and intellect demanded of the contemporary avant-garde.This volume--the first of its kind on Auster--will be useful to both scholars and students for the penetrating self-analysis and the wide range of biographical information and critical commentary it contains. "Conversations with Paul Auster" covers all of Auster's oeuvre, from "The New York Trilogy"--of which "City of Glass" is a component--to "Sunset Park" (2010), along with his screenplays for "Smoke" (1995) and "Blue in the Face" (1996). Within, Auster nimbly discusses his poetry, memoir, nonfiction, translations, and film directing.

To many, the life of Ernest Hemingway has taken on mythic proportions. From his romantic entanglements to his legendary bravado, the elements of Papa’s persona have fascinated readers, turning Hemingway into such an outsized figure that it is almost impossible to imagine him as a real person. James Hutchisson’s biography reclaims Hemingway from the sensationalism, revealing the life of a man who was often bookish and introverted, an outdoor enthusiast who revered the natural world, and a generous spirit with an enviable work ethic. This is an examination of the writer through a new lens—one that more accurately captures Hemingway’s virtues as well as his flaws. Hutchisson situates Hemingway’s life and art in the defining contexts of the women he loved and lost, the places he held dear, and the specter of mental illness that haunted his family. This balanced portrait examines for the first time in full detail the legendary writer’s complex medical history and his struggle against clinical depression. The first major biography of Hemingway in over twenty years, this monumental achievement provides readers with a fresh, comprehensive look at one of the most acclaimed authors of the twentieth century.

Paul Auster (b. 1947) is one of the most critically acclaimed and intensely studied authors in America today. His varied career as a novelist, poet, translator, and filmmaker has attracted scholarly scrutiny from a variety of critical perspectives. The steadily rising arc of his large readership has made him something of a popular culture figure with many appearances in print interviews, as well as on television, the radio, and the internet. Auster's best-known novel may be his first, City of Glass (1985), a grim and intellectually puzzling mystery that belies its surface image as a detective novel and goes on to become a profound meditation on transience and mortality, the inadequacies of language, and isolation. Fifteen more novels have followed since then, including The Music of Chance, Moon Palace, The Book of Illusions, and The Brooklyn Follies. He has, in the words of one critic, "given the phrase 'experimental fiction' a good name" by fashioning bona fide literary works with all the rigor and intellect demanded of the contemporary avant-garde. This volume-the first of its kind on Auster-will be useful to both scholars and students for the penetrating self-analysis and the wide range of biographical information and critical commentary it contains. Conversations with Paul Auster covers all of Auster's oeuvre, from The New York Trilogy of which City of Glass is a component to Sunset Park (2010), along with his screenplays for Smoke (1995) and Blue in the Face (1996). Within, Auster nimbly discusses his poetry, memoir, nonfiction, translations, and film directing.

Most frequently regarded as a writer of the supernatural, Poe was actually among the most versatile of American authors, writing social satire, comic hoaxes, mystery stories, science fiction, prose poems, literary criticism and theory, and even a play. As a journalist and editor, Poe was closely in touch with the social, political, and cultural trends of nineteenth-century America. Recent scholarship has linked Poe's imaginative writings to the historical realities of nineteenth-century America, including to science and technology, wars and politics, the cult of death and bereavement, and, most controversially, to slavery and stereotyped attitudes toward women. Edgar Allan Poe: Beyond Gothicism presents a systematic approach to topical criticism of Poe, revealing a new portrait of Poe as an author who blended topics of intellectual and social importance and returned repeatedly to these ideas in different works and using different aesthetic strategies during his brief but highly productive career. Twelve essays point readers toward new ways of considering Poe's themes, techniques, and aesthetic preoccupations by looking at Poe in the context of landscapes, domestic interiors, slavery, prosody, Eastern cultures, optical sciences, Gothicism, and literary competitions, clubs, and reviewing.

Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Poetry and Tales brilliantly represents the best scholarly material on Poe, delivered in an accessible, conversational tone that will appeal to students. The contents run the gamut from Poe's notorious and imaginative horror tales to his literary criticism. Moreover, James M. Hutchisson has included examples of Poe's science fiction stories, detective tales, and the oft-overlooked satires. Instructors and students alike will benefit from this edition's introduction, timeline, footnotes, and appendices, which help to place Poe within his literary and social timeframe, a consideration too often neglected. (Amy Branam, Frostburg State University)

Beginning in 1920 and continuing through World War II, the city of Charleston, South Carolina, underwent an unprecedented cultural revival. The city's literary, artistic, and institutional flowering both anticipated and helped precipitate similar movements that collectively came to be known as the Southern Renaissance. This volume reveals the richness and complexity of the Charleston Renaissance and its place among wider trends and events of the day.

Presenting a long overdue assessment of this literary and artistic movement, Renaissance in Charleston recreates the historical, social, economic, and political contexts through which its central participants moved. Discussed are such figures as John Bennett, Josephine Pinckney, Beatrice Ravenel, DuBose Heyward, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, Alfred Hutty, Julia Peterkin, Laura Bragg, and Edwin A. Harleston.

The essays tell how these and other individuals faced the tensions and contradictions of their time and place. While some traced their lineage back to the city's first families, others were relative newcomers. Some broke new ground racially and sexually as well as artistically; others perpetuated the myths of the Old South. Some were censured at home but praised in New York, London, and Paris. The essays also underscore the significance and growth of such cultural institutions as the Poetry Society of South Carolina, the Charleston Museum, and the Gibbes Art Gallery.

A generation after the passing of most artists and writers involved in the Charleston Renaissance, a new generation of scholars has finally come to terms with its legacy.

Babbit captures the flavor of the United States during the economic boom years of the 1920s, and its protagonist has become the symbol of middle-class mediocrity, his name an enduring part of the American lexicon.