Thirty years after the first volume of the < I>Scribner Writers Series < /I>, this second Retrospective Supplement follows the path of the first by re- examining some of the most important and influential writers in the American canon-men and women who continue to be studied in high schools and universities as often today as when the< I> American Writers Series< /I> first began. Each essay, written by an expert in the field with years of teaching experience, explores the life and work of individu authors. The bio-critical essays on such writers as Ralph Waldo Ellison, Edgar Allan Poe, Kate Chopin, Theodore Dreiser, Isaac Bashevis Singer,