Clarence Gohdes

Bibliographical guide to the study of the literature of the U.S.A.

The Bibliographical Guide remains the most useful handbook of its kind now available to scholars for research in the field. The fifth revised edition includes updating and considerable but highly selective expansion as well as a section on Womens Studies. This edition includes over 100 new editions as well as more than 750 additional studies and reference works for a total of approximately 1,900 reference items, all annotated with the exception of a few with explanatory subtitles.

British Interest in American Literature During the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century as Reflected by Mudie's Select Library

ONE OF THE MOST reliable indexes to literary taste in Victorian England is, of course, the catalogues of the circulating libraries. In a fashion they correspond to the lists of works chosen by our contemporary book clubs: while they reveal little or nothing about the reading of the poorer classes or of the most discriminating folk, they reflect pretty accurately the preferences of the large group of readers who, possessed of better than average discernment, provide probably the chief market for new books, not intended for the schools or for special interests such as religion, technology, economics, and so on. But the catalogues of the Victorian circulating libraries are much more important to the historian than the selections of present-day book clubs ever will be because they mirror the taste of a far greater proportion of the book-reading population. The reason for this fact lies in the English practice of borrowing rather than buiying a new book. Gladstone in I852 expressed the situation very clearly: