Authors & Their Works: Selected Reference: Drama

This sixth edition of Contemporary Dramatists presents 450 of the most famous living playwrights in the English language. Entries include biographies, bibliographies and critical essays on the most-studied dramatists.

Collection of 106 essays on playwrights ranging from ancient Greeks and Romans to contemporary dramatists taken from the recently published Critical Survey of Drama, Second Revised Edition. Each essay lists the playwright's principal dramatic works and other writings and has sections on the playwright's writings in other forms, and life. The major part of each essay is the Analysis, which discusses selected dramatic works in detail, tracing the evolution of the playwright's work. Notable Playwrights is similar in form to Salem's other Magill's Choice sets on notable writers.

Critical essays examine representative plays and identify themes and characteristics employed by more than 170 dramatists ranging from Aeschylus in 400 B.C. to the contemporary Austrian Peter Handke.