Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2001. [Vol. 7.] Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 27)

Book review - Péter Egri: Vadon, Lehel. Az amerikai irodalom és irodalomtudomány bibliográfiája a magyar időszaki kiadványokban 1990-ig [A Bibliography of American Literature and Literary Scholarship in Hungarian Periodicals till 1900]

Thirdly, on this vast and apparently chaotic wilderness he has imposed an exemplary order: the volume is logically segmented, its arrangement is lucid and based on solid structural premises. The detailed, though never lengthy introductory chapter (3547)—a separate disquisition in its own right

—offers a helpful description of the undertaking's thematic range and clarifies the principles of its structural layout. The second large structural unit of the volume (49-864) contains the personal entries, which range from Edward Abbey to Eugenia Zukerman. In the personal bibliography the distinction between the primary and secondary sources is rigorously maintained. The same principle of organization recurs in the treatment of each author, which makes the arrangement of the material especially attractive, for the reader/researcher will find in the same entry what our dailies and journals have published both by and about, say, Hemingway. It was a felicitous idea to have the names of the respective authors included in the table of contents: the alphabetical list immediately arouses interest and helpfully draws the attention of the user, facilitates reader orientation, and readily offers the kind of initial information that most users need. With regard to this latter unit of the book I might add, by way of supplement, that on the evidence of András Benedek's O'Neill monograph (Budapest: Gondolat, 1964. 137) the American playwright's drama Különös közjáték [Strange Interlude] was first published in Színházi Élet [Theater Life] in 1929, and so was Amerikai Elektra [Mourning Becomes Electra] in 1937, both translated into Hungarian by Zsolt Harsányi. The bibliography's third unit (865-867) references the works of unidentified authors: novels, short stories, sketches, feuilletons; even a reportorial account is separately listed. The fourth part (868-871) presents folkloristic material, successively arranged as American folk-poetry, Native American oral poetry, and African American folk-poetry. The fifth chapter (872-940) is made up of a bulky general bibliography. As such, it serves as a counterpart of the personal entries. This unit, to quote the author, "includes the kind of literature (studies, essays, articles, book reviews and other kindred publications) 180