"Wide-ranging and authoritative, A Reader's Guide to the Twentieth-Century Novel is a unique and invaluable guide to modern fiction written in English. Arranged chronologically from Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim to E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, it contains detailed accounts of some 750 novels from the United States, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand, and the Caribbean. All of the century's major novelists are represented, alongside less-celebrated writers whose work has been unjustly neglected: such beloved children's authors as A.A. Milne, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Kenneth Grahame; and such popular authors as Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, Daphne Du Maurier, and others whose work has left a definite stamp on readers' imaginations." "Each lively entry supplies a summary of the plot, places the novel in a biographical and historical context, and provides a provocative critical assessment. Written by a team of thirty-eight contributors made up of critics, biographers, novelists, historians, academics, and literary journalists, all entries are fully cross-referenced and supplemented at the end of the book by brief biographical notes on all authors and by helpful alphabetical indexes of novels and authors. Interwoven with the entries are 150 short extracts illustrating the voice and style of many featured novels."--Jacket.