Richard Layman

Gale Study Guides to Great Literature is a reference line composed of three series: Literary Masters, Literary Masterpieces and Literary Topics. Convenient, comprehensive and targeted toward current coursework, these guides place authors, titles and topics into context for high school and college students as well as general researchers. Each Literary Masters volume introduces a significant author, covering basic biographical information. The related Literary Masterpieces volume explores a major title from this author's works in detail. Finally, the Literary Topics volume places the author and work within a relevant literary movement or genre.

The Maltese Falcon

Examines Hammett's life, discusses the historical context of his works, and examines his short stories and novels, including "The Maltese Falcon."

Dashiell Hammett

Matthew J. Bruccoli

George Garrett

Updates entries already published and supplements the Dictionary of Literary Biography series with entries on newly prominent writers.

Dictionary of Literary Biography - Yearbook 1998

Judith Baughman

Vincent Tompkins

Victor Bondi

Eric L. Bargeron

James F. Tidd

Intended as a reference source for American social history, this volume discusses the people, events and ideas of the period 1920-1929. After an introductory overview and chronology, subject chapters follow with subject-specific timelines and alphabetically arranged entries.

American Decades: 1920-1929

Matthew Joseph Bruccoli

Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook 1999

Number 5

The New Black Mask

Number 4

Covers American authors that were prominent from 1968-1988. Emphasis is on authors from all genres that are most frequently studied in high school and college literature courses.

Broadening Views, 1968-1988

Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography

Jeffrey Helterman

Biographical profiles of eighty important American novelists since 1945 feature personal portraits, critical discussions, and biographies of their works

American Novelists Since World War II

Merritt Moseley

Contains biographical sketches of representative British novelists whose work began to appear roughly around 1960.

Third series

British Novelists Since 1960

The legend of Dashiell Hammett, the former Pinkerton detective who reinvented the mystery story in five books written between 1929 and 1934, is carefully examined here by Richard Layman in a meticulously factual account of all that is likely to be known about the real "Continental Op." This unsentimental account of Hammett from his rural Maryland youth through the Pinkerton years in San Francisco, fame as a novelist, notoriety as a Hollywood screen writer, imprisonment as an uncooperative McCarthy committee witness, and an obscure death in 1961 highlights the facts while accenting the shadow on which the legend would be built. Book jacket.

The Life of Dashiell Hammett

Shadow Man

Tandy McConnell

A look at American civilization by decade covers history, politics, law, economics, culture, sports, social trends, and important people.

American Decades: 1990-1999

C. E. Frazer Clark

Roberttthew J. Beum

Essays on French poets during a vital and prolific era. Covers Romanticism, lyricism, Ultraroyalisme and Eclaircissement, the Parnassians, Decadents, symbolists, intimistes and realists, as well as the proliferation of poetic sects aligned with major idioms, in many cases incorporating something from each other.

Nineteenth-century French Poets

Fitzgerald/Hemingway Annual

An illustrated guide to the mystery genre's hardest hitting writers focuses on the three men who created a uniquely American brand of detective fiction--Raymond Chandler, Dashiell HAmmett, and Ross Macdonald, the creators of such famed fictional private detectives as PHilip Marlowe, Sam Spade, and Lew Archer. Original.

Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Macdonald : a Literary Reference

Hardboiled Mystery Writers

"Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon is often named as one of the best twentieth-century novels. John Huston's film adaptation is one of the earliest examples of film noir. It made Humphrey Bogart a star, and was selected by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 greatest movies of all time. Now, Discovering The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade uncovers from institutional and private archives a wealth of treasures about Hammett's masterpiece, his detective Sam Spade, the three film versions of the novel, stage adaptations, Sam Spade short stories, radio presentations, and even comics. Many of the discoveries here are previously unpublished. The book provides hundreds of rare documents and original source materials, including production notes for the three movie versions. Contributors include Dashiell Hammett himself, plus Jo Hammett, Richard Layman, Mary Astor, Joseph Shaw, Dorothy Parker, John Huston, Hal Wallis, Darryl F. Zanuck, Joe Gores, William F. Nolan, and more than fifty additional writers. It is illustrated with more than 200 photos, illustrations, and facsimiles. The book is a joy for fans of Hammett, Sam Spade, detective fiction, film noir, and the history of literature and cinema."--Publisher's website.

The Evolution of Dashiell Hammett's Masterpiece, Including John Huston's Movie with Humphrey Bogart

Discovering the Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade

Presents biographies and criticism of some of the most influential Norwegian writers of the twentieth century, producing a representative cross section of the Norwegian literary environment with writers of various decades, movements, and genres - preference has been given to authors whose works have been translated into English.

Twentieth-century Norwegian Writers

Presents career biographies and criticism for Portuguese writers from historic and modern times. There is also an essay on medieval poetry.

Richard Layman

Books

Your next favorite book is out there