This is the ninth volume in the Penguin Guide to Literature, and comprises an account of American literature from its colonial origins to the heterogeneous, distinctive voices of today. The first part of this book, which includes an essay on the relevant social and historical context, takes the reader from James Fenimore Cooper, the first American writer to achieve international status as a novelist, through to the early 20th-century and the works of Henry James and Edith Wharton and includes essays on Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Twain and Whitman. The section on the modern age goes on to discuss the work of dramatists from Eugene O'Neill to Edward Albee, novelists from William Faulkner to Paul Bellow and poets from Robert Frost to Allen Ginsberg. Additional essays are also included on ethnic literature, the future of literature and the role of the publisher and the critic in American society.