West, James L.W. 1946- (James Lemuel Wills West, III)

PERSONAL:

Born November 15, 1946, in Roanoke, VA; son of James Lemuel Wills, Jr. (a college professor) and Lucy Kate (a public schoolteacher) West. Education: University of South Carolina at Columbia, B.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1971. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES:

Home—State College, PA. Office—Department of English, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (now Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, instructor, 1971-72, assistant professor, 1972-77, associate professor, 1977-83, professor of English, 1983-86; Pennsylvania State University, University Park, professor of English, 1986-92, distinguished professor, 1992-2000, Sparks Professor, 2000—, Rosenbach fellow, 1983.

MEMBER:

Bibliographical Society of America, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, Dreiser Society, Fitzgerald Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants and fellowships from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1978-79, 1994-95, and 1998-99, American Council of Learned Societies, 1981 and 1987, and American Philosophical Society, 1984 and 1997; fellow of National Humanities Center, 1981-82; Guggenheim fellow, 1985-86; Fulbright fellowships, 1985-86 and 1989-90; award from American Academy in Rome, 1994.

WRITINGS:

William Styron: A Descriptive Bibliography, G.K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1977.

The Making of "This Side of Paradise," University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1980.

A Sister Carrie Portfolio, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1985.

(With Stuart Wright) Reynolds Price: A Bibliography, 1949-1984, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1986.

American Authors and the Literary Marketplace since 1900, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1988.

William Styron, a Life, Random House (New York, NY), 1998.

The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King, Random House (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to literary journals.

EDITOR

Gyascutus: Studies in Antebellum Southern Humorous and Sporting Writing, Humanities Press (Atlantic Highlands, NJ), 1978.

(Textual editor) Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, Penguin (New York, NY), 1981.

(With Arthur D. Casciato) Critical Essays on William Styron, G.K. Hall (Boston, MA), 1982.

(With Thomas P. Riggio and Neda M. Westlake) American Diaries, 1902-1926, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1983.

Conversations with William Styron, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 1985.

(With Arthur D. Casciato) Ted Kromer, Waiting for Nothing, and Other Writings, University of Georgia Press (Atlanta, GA), 1986.

Theodore Dreiser, Jennie Gerhardt, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1992.

Dreiser's Jennie Gerhardt: New Essays on the Restored Text, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1995.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Thomas P. Riggio) Dreiser's Russian Diary, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1996.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Trimalchio: An Early version of the Great Gatsby, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flappers and Philosophers, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tales of the Jazz Age, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Coeditor of Review, a publication of University Press of Virginia, 1977-92.

SIDELIGHTS:

James L.W. West once told CA: "Much of my scholarly work has been with authors' papers and manuscripts. I have reconstructed the compositional history of several literary works. I'm also interested in biography, literary history, publishing history, and author-publisher relationships."