Classic Love And Romance Literature Book

From Romeo and Juliet to Rebecca, entries treat scores of the most memorable novels and plays, providing information on authors, works, characters, and themes. Coverage is fair and square: men and women get equal time; elite and popular fiction are treated with respect; and minority voices are clearly heard.

Classic Love and Romance Literature includes more than 340 A-Z entries that are are thoroughly illustrated, cross-referenced, and indexed. This work accomplishes what the best reference books always do: it sends you back to the originals.

VOYA

Choosing a traditional, broad, literary definition of romance over the more popular genre fiction definition, Brackett provides information on sixtyeight novels and three plays, many of which can be found on high school and college reading lists. Works included range from classics such as Wuthering Heights and Madame Bovary to more modern titles such as An Accidental Tourist (Knopf, 1985) and The Robber Bride (Doubleday, 1993). Alphabetically arranged entries are one to two pages long, with separate accounts for each author, their work, major characters, and terms and concepts important for understanding romantic literature, such as "quest" and "chivalry." The book's excellent crossreferences and thorough indexing will help users easily locate the entries they need. The choice of literary works covered is highly select, but there is a good mix between classic and contemporary works. There is no shortage of reference sources for literary criticism and biographical information on authors, including perennial favorites such as Masterplots (Salem) and Dictionary of Literary Biography (Gale). However even if you have these or other sources in your reference stacks, you might still want to make room for this recommended title in large high school and public libraries where these types of literary assignments are popular. There is a nice balance between basic plot, character information, and criticism in this book, making it a good starting point for students researching one of the works covered. Index. Photos. Biblio. 1999, ABCCLIO, Ages 14 to Adult, 406p. PLB $75. Reviewer: John Charles