Myriad-minded: to those who knew S. Foster Damon as a friend and colleague, that felicitous Coleridgean adjective best describes a man whose kaleidoscopic talents and interests--William Blake, cooking, Punch and Judy, fencing, book collect...

Samuel Nathaniel Behrman ranks as one of the most distinguished writers of sophisticated comedy at a time when the American theatre reached its highest point of urbanity and productivity. With only two solo efforts mounted for Broadway, Be...

Since his first novel was published in 1985, S. M. Stirling has established himself as an author adept at writing along the broad generic spectrum that includes science fiction and fantasy. With significant works in fantasy, military scien...

Of the many books by Sabine Baring-Gould, only six are collections of short fiction, not counting his volumes of fairy tales and other stories for children. He wrote far more novels (around thirty-five) and more than twenty guide books and...

The varied phases of Gottfried Wilhelm Sacer's life as a preceptor and later as a lawyer in the service of the duchy of Brunswick, Lüneburg, and Wolfenbüttel were accompanied by many-sided literary ambitions. His religious poetry...

Although Edward Sackville-West is probably best remembered as a music critic, he wrote five unusual novels that earned him a place in the history of literature during the 1920s and 1930s. They did not remain in print for long and, with one...

Ira Sadoff's initial style and approach to his subjects--his characteristic erasures and retreats--seem largely influenced by the psychological and political zeitgeist reflected in the work of many American poets in the 1970s. Shaped by th...

Benjamin Alire Sáenz's first book, Calendar of Dust (1991), won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation in 1992, and a year later he received the prestigious Lannan Poetry Fellowship. He has received many other awa...

Robert Sage, journalist, editor, and translator, worked in the Paris,Vienna, Rome, and London offices of the Chicago Tribune and the New York Herald for most of his life; from September 1927 to June 1929 he was also an editor for transitio...

Robb Hansell Sagendorph was for thirty-five years the epitome of New England and what it represented. As editor and publisher of Yankee magazine and the Old Farmer's Almanac, he perpetuated an ideal regarded as the spirit of New England, a...

Hans Sahl--poet, novelist, critic, and translator--is one of the many writers who had to wrest their works from the devastating experience of persecution, exile, and isolation. Though his career did not flourish in America as it might have...

George Saiko's two novels and short stories contain a complex literary world in which examination of recent history is combined with exploration of the unconscious. Like Robert Musil, Hermann Broch, and Heimito von Doderer, Saiko deals wit...

The French poet and diplomat, Saint-John Perse (1887-1975) ranks among the greatest French poets of the 20th century. His work is epic in nature, characterized by a cosmic vision and a lofty rhetoric. He won the Nobel Prize for literature ...

Hector Hugh Munro (Saki), one of many British writers to perish during World War I, is thought to have died before his writing attained its full potential. While he wrote short stories throughout his career, he eventually turned to writing...

Recent treatments of Slovene literature generally recognize the year 1966 as a watershed. What came before is seen as flowing with all due dignity into literary history. What comes after, almost statutorily, qualifies as contemporary writi...

Although considering himself a southwestern rather than a New Mexican writer, Rubén Sálaz-Márquez belongs to the tradition of the New Mexico writers who revere and lament the passing of time-honored ways of life, be th...

Harold J. Salemson was a very young American writer in Paris at the close of the twenties and one of the few whose work grew largely out of a French education. Unlike the expatriates who went to Paris "to live cheaply and be able to write ...

Andrew Salkey is one of the most prolific and versatile of West Indian writers. He has written over twenty books, including novels for adults, novels for children, collections of short stories, books of poems, and travel-cum-political jour...

The Indian/British author Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 1947) was a political parablist whose work often focused on outrages of history and particularly of religions. His book The Satanic Verses earned him a death sentence from the Iranian Ay...

The Catalan domain stretches southward from Roussillon in the French Pyrenees, through the eastern edge of the Iberian Peninsula, down to the city of Alicante, and extends beyond the mainland to encompass the Balearic Islands and the Sardi...

Sam Shepard (Samuel Shepard Rogers VII; born 1943) began his career as a playwright in the lively off-off-Broadway scene of the 1960s and became one of the United States' most prolific and acclaimed dramatists. He was also a film actor, a ...

Samson Occom's A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian (1772) and A Choice Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs: Intended for the Edification of Sincere Christians, of All Denominations (1774) are believed to be the ...

The colonial leader Samuel Adams (1722-1803) helped prepare the ground for the American Revolution by inflammatory newspaper articles and shrewd organizational activities. A fundamental change in British policy toward the American colonies...

Through the economic upheaval caused by the Industrial Revolution and his experience in the movement for political reform in and around Manchester, Samuel Bamford witnessed the transformation of working-class life during the first half of ...

The most noted member of an American newspaper family, Samuel Bowles (1826-1878) earned his reputation of fierce independence at a time when newspapers existed largely by means of partisan political support. Samuel Bowles was born in Sprin...