From Anne Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America in the seventeenth century, to Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize in 1993, women writers have woven a rich tapestry of voices across four centuries of American history. Their writings have embraced a marvellous diversity of visions, including those of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Maya Angelou, Edith Wharton, Adrienne Rich, and Willa Cather. The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States provides a comprehensive, authoritative, and highly informative survey of these writers and their work as it illuminates the issues that fired their imaginations. Over eight hundred entries, ranging from brief identifications to extensive essays, offer a goldmine of information about women's writing, women's history, and women's concerns. The contributors - many of whom are well-known writers such as Susan Faludi, Deborah Tannen, Jane Gallop, and Nell Irvin Painter - provide not only biographical entries on poets, novelists, and playwrights, but also offer extensive coverage of the many personal, cultural, and historical issues that have been explored by and have influenced the lives and productivity of women writers. AIDS, race and racism, violence and sexual harassment, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement are just some of the subjects examined. From Betty Friedan to Alice Walker, children's literature to lesbian drama, The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States paints a fascinating and remarkably diverse portrait of women and women's writing in America.