This cutting-edge Companion is a comprehensive resource for the study of the modern American novel 1900-1950. Published at a time when literary modernism is being thoroughly reassessed, it reflects current investigations into the origins and character of the movement as a whole.

The Companion allows students to orient individual works and authors in their principal cultural and social contexts. Contributions treat major directions in fiction, such as regionalism and the proletarian movement, for example, as well as the related practices of individual novelists, complementary essays address pertinent cultural, social, economic, and political contexts. Other pieces contribute to efforts to recover minority voices, including those of African-American novelists, and popular subgenres, such as detective fiction. Each essay is accompanied by a short bibliography directing students to major relevant scholarship for further inquiry.

Taken as a whole, the volume suggests the many ways that "modern, " "American, " and "the novel" carry new meanings going into the twenty-first century.