Fiction: 1900 to the 1930s

Abstract

The Harlem Renaissance continues to attract much scholarly attention, including its influence on writers of the black diaspora. Harlem stands as an imaginary with social and aesthetic influence in Paris, Africa, and the Caribbean. Detective fiction has become an important area for scholarship, both in the study of hard-boiled authors such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and with respect to the interest in the genre shown by a variety of writers from Gertrude Stein to Rudolph Fisher and Pauline Hopkins. There are important new collections on Zora Neale Hurston, John Dos Passos, and H. P. Lovecraft this year, and new biographies of Jack London, Carl Van Vechten, Abraham Cahan, and the white women who played an important role in the Harlem Renaissance. The Critical Insights series has produced volumes on themes such as the American dream and American road literature and on genres, including pulp fiction, science fiction, and crime and detective fiction.