An authoritative guide to American literature, this Companion examines the experimental forms, socio-cultural changes, literary movements, and major authors of the early 20th century. This Companion provides authoritative and wide-ranging guidance on early twentieth-century American fiction.

* Considers commonly studied authors such as Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway, alongside key texts of the period by Richard Wright, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, and Anzia Yezierska

* Examines how the works of these diverse writers have been interpreted in their own day and how current readings have expanded our understanding of their cultural and literary significance

* Covers a broad range of topics, including the First and Second World Wars, literary language differences, author celebrity, the urban landscape, modernism, the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, regionalism, and African-American fiction

* Gives students the contextual information necessary for formulating their own critiques of classic American fiction