Plays by American Women: 1930-1960 (Applause Books for Young Readers)
A historic drama collection well worth adding because of an unusual selection of plays informed by the editor's semicovert feminist-activist perspective. Editor Barlow tips her ideological hand, however, when in her general introduction (there are lengthy and informative introductions to each of the anthology's eight plays, too), she makes the disingenuous remark that Lillian Hellman was "staunchly liberal." Beg pardon, but Hellman was a radical, one famously denounced as such by her more typically liberal contemporary, Mary McCarthy. (Barlow's one, too; a radical, that is.) Hellman's is the most familiar of this book's contents:The Little Foxes. Nearly as famous is Clare Boothe'sThe Women. The other six plays offer refreshing variety. They include an agitprop one-act based on a story by that old rad Whittaker Chambers; Gertrude Stein's libretto (to Virgil Thomson's music) for the Susan B. Anthony opera,The Mother of Us All; two plays by African Americans (including, instead of Hansberry'sRaisin in the Sun, Alice Childress' similarly protestingTrouble in Mind); and plays by women whose names are too much eclipsed by their husbands'--Jane Bowles and Fay Kanin.Ray Olson--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.