This collection gathers together original essays dealing with Melville's relations with his historical era, with class, with the marketplace, with ethnic otherness, and with religion. These essays are framed by a new, short biography by Robert Milder, an introduction by Giles Gunn, an illustrated chronology, and a bibliographical essay. Taken together, these pieces afford a fresh and searching set of perspectives on Melville's connections both with his own age and also with our own. This book makes the case, as does no other collection of criticism of its size, for Melville's commanding centrality to nineteenth-century American writing.

One of America's most celebrated women, Emily Dickinson was virtually unpublished in her own time and unknown to the public at large. Today her poetry is commonly anthologized and widely praised for its precision, its intensity, its depth and beauty. Dickinson's life and work, however, remain in important ways mysterious. This collection of essays, all of them previously unpublished, represent the best of contemporary scholarship and points the way toward exciting new directions for the future.

The 1999 Hemingway centennial marks the perfect time for the reevaluation of his position as America's premier modernist writer. These essays, all written specially for this collection, plumb unexplored historical details of Hemingway's life to illuminate new and often unexpected dimensions of the force of his literary accomplishment. Discussing biographical details of his personal and professional life along with the subtleties of his character, the text includes a number of fascinating photos and images.

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, organic and all-natural foods were becoming commonplace in human diets. As we became more aware of what we were putting into our own bodies, it seemed only natural that we began to consider what we were feeding our pets. Little did I know that my first job, at the young age of 17, would shape the course of my life. My duties included taking care of the Goldstein family’s two girls and working four days a week at their Katonah, New York, store Lick Your Chops, one of the very first all-natural pet stores.

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe in Five Volumes is a Portable File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project (the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series) to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them.