The Columbia History of the American Novel

James Sinclair Ross was born in northern Saskatchewan, in a prairie setting that figures largely in his fiction, including his first novel, As For Me and My House (1941). Between 1942 and 1946 he served in the Canadian army in London, after which he returned to his prewar -804- bank job, but continued writing, publishing his second novel, The Well, in 1958. Upon his retirement in 1968, he moved to Athens, Greece, where he finished Whir of Gold (1970), and then to Spain, returning to Canada in 1980.

Philip Roth (1933-)

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Roth graduated from Bucknell University in 1954 and received his M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1955. Profoundly influenced by his own Jewish upbringing, Roth explores and satirizes the American Jewish experience, as well as American culture in general. His works include Goodbye Columbus (1959), Letting Go (1962), And When She Was Good (1967), Portnoy's Complaint (1969), The Ghost Writer (1979), The Anatomy Lesson (1983), The Counterlife (1986), and Deception (1990).

Susanna Rowson (1762–1824)

Susanna (Haswell) Rowson was born in Portsmouth, England. Her father was a British naval lieutenant who was working as a customs collector in Massachusetts at the outbreak of the American Revolution. During the war, the family was interned and their property was confiscated; in 1778 Haswell and his family were returned to England, where Susanna worked as a governess for the Duchess of Devonshire. Her first novel, Victoria, was published there in 1786, and that same year she married William Rowson. In 1791 Charlotte; or, A Tale of Truth, a cautionary tale of seduction set in America, appeared. The following year Rowson's business failed, and the couple turned to the stage for their living. In America after 1793, Susanna wrote and acted in several social comedies and comic operas. In 1797 she gave up the theater to open a school for girls in Boston, but continued writing: dramas, novels, essays, and textbooks. Lucy Temple, a sequel to Charlotte, was published posthumously in 1828.

Gabrielle Roy (1909-83)

Roy was born in what was, at the time, the village of Saint-Boniface, outside Winnipeg, Manitoba. The youngest of eleven children, she was unable to attend university, and instead obtained a teaching di-805- ploma from the Winnipeg Normal Institute. After several years as a schoolteacher, she traveled to London, where she studied acting briefly before embarking on a literary and journalistic career. Her first novel, Bonheur d'occasion (1945; translated in 1947 as The Tin Flute), garnered a Governor General's Award (her first of three) and the prestigious Lorne Pierce Medal; Roy won the French Prix Femina (the first Canadian to do so); and in 1947 she became the first woman fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Joanna Russ (1937-)

A native of New York City, Russ received her B.A. from Cornell University in 1957 and her M.F.A. from Yale University in 1960. Her subsequent teaching career has included appointments at Cornell, SUNY/ Binghamton, and the University of Colorado. An avowed feminist, Russ writes science fiction that explores issues of gender, politics, and utopian ethics. Her works include Picnic in Paradise (1968), And Chaos Died (1970), The Female Man (1975), The Adventures of Alyx (1983), Extra(ordinary) People (1984), and How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983).

J(erome) D(avid) Salinger (1919-)

Born and bred in New York City, Salinger began writing stories at the age of fifteen. He published his first piece when he was twenty, while serving in the United States Army. During World War II, Salinger published a number of stories concerning GI life in Collier's Magazine. Little is known about Salinger's personal life; an extraordinarily private man, he lives in New England as a virtual recluse, refusing all interviews. His works include The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1963).

Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789–1867)

Born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to a wealthy Berkshire family, Sedgwick received a first-rate education at Boston and Albany, and though she traveled little and never married, she was active in philanthropic concerns, in the Unitarian Church, and in literary and so-806- cial circles. Her novels — domestic stories in an intentionally moral vein — include two historical romances, Hope Leslie (1827) and The Linwoods (1835), but all of her novels — A New England Tale (1822), Redwood (1824), Clarence (1830), and Married or Single? (1857) — present realistic depictions of New England home life and social customs. Sedgwick died at West Roxbury, Massachusetts, at the age of seventy-seven.

Lydia Huntley Sigourney (1791–1865)

Born in Norwich, Connecticut, educated there and at Hartford, Sigourney began writing poetry at the age of eight. She taught school in Norwich, later opening her own school in Hartford. Her first book was Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse (1815), but her marriage in 1819 to Charles Sigourney ended her literary career for a time. She resumed writing for money — anonymously — when Mr. Sigourney's business declined; eventually she resumed the use of her name, publishing nearly seventy volumes of poetry and miscellaneous writings.

Leslie Marmon Silko (1948-)

Raised in New Mexico and currently residing in Tucson, Arizona, Silko writes fiction rooted in her own tribal experience and in Navajo and Hopi history. Deeply concerned with the predicament of the Native American and the bifurcation of her own cultural life, Silko uses Indian legend, communal custom, and social injustice to structure her work. The troubled identity of the Native American — particularly the Indian woman — is a consistent theme. Silko first received critical attention for the poetry in Laguna Woman (1974) and for the fictional Ceremony (1977). These works were followed by Storyteller (1981), The Delicacy and Strength of Lace (1985), and a number of frequently anthologized stories, notably 'Yellow Woman' and 'Lullaby.'

William Gilmore Simms (1806-70)

A native of Charleston, South Carolina, Simms was the son of a shopkeeper who went bankrupt. With little formal education, he wrote poetry at an early age, read law, and was part owner and -807- editor of the City Gazette before moving to New York in pursuit of a literary career. By 1835, when he returned to South Carolina, Simms had begun writing the romances of the Revolution and of Southern frontier history that would make him famous (his early works, Guy Rivers [1834], The Yemassee [1835], and The Partisan [1835], are the best known today). In the North, he was compared to Cooper, though his work is more realistic. In the South, he became a popular political figure, serving in the state legislature (1844-46) where he was an ardent Secessionist; he lost the lieutenantgovernorship by only one vote. Simms wrote no novels after the outbreak of the Civil War, which cost him his Northern readership as well as his home and property. He died in Charleston on June 11, 1870.

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968)

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair grew up in New York City and attended Columbia University. While still an adolescent, he sold 'juvenile' literature to a variety of popular magazines. In 1900 Sinclair left college to devote himself to his writing. His early novels were largely dismissed as sentimental fiction, but in 1904 Sinclair joined the Socialist Party of America and began to incorporate his social outrage into his fiction. He investigated the stockyards and oil fields and probed the lifestyles of the factory worker and piece-work laborer. In 1906 Sinclair founded Helicon Hall, an effort in cooperative living, and in 1934 he ran for governor of California on the EPIC (End Poverty in California) Democratic platform. His works include The Jungle (1906), King Coal (1917), Oil (1927), Boston (1928), and The Profits of Religion (1918).

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-)

The son of a rabbi, Singer was born in Radzymn, Poland. In 1935 Singer came to America and eventually