John Earl Bassett

Harlem in Review charts critical responses to black American writers in the 1920s and 1930s. Based on broad research into American and African-American journals and newspapers, it includes more than a thousand annotated items and an introduction surveying major issues in the criticism. The Harlem Renaissance inspired widespread interest in black culture as well as the first public debates among black writers about their own writing. With the publication...

"Sherwood Anderson: An American Career is the first critical introduction to this important Midwestern and American writer in over a quarter century. While re-evaluating the accomplishments in Winesburg, Ohio and Anderson's other novels and short stories, it pays more attention to his non-fictional, autobiographical, and journalistic writing than do previous studies. It draws on unpublished manuscripts in the Newberry Library Anderson papers that...