The last decade or so has witnessed a boom in scholarly writing on the subject of the Harlem Renaissance, an upsurge of activity which has also resulted in the publication of several major encyclopaedia projects surveying the ‘New Negro Movement’. The latest, a Gale Critical Companion, joins David Levering Lewis’s edited Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (1994), Aberjhani West and Sandra West’s Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (2003), and the more recent Routledge Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (2004) edited by Paul Finkelman. Given the wide choice of reference works available, what makes the Gale edition distinctive and desirable? Should a given school, college, or university decide to invest £200 (or more, with the shipping costs for three hulking tomes worth of 1900 hardbound pages totalling 13lbs in weight) in purchasing the whole collection, or could the selection of single volumes be more useful in the long run? Most importantly, what can students and/or researchers learn from and actually do with this encyclopaedia?

The Gale Critical Companion volumes are organized around entries on major topics and key figures associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Volume One examines ‘Overviews and General Studies’, ‘Social, Economic and Political Factors’, ‘Publishing and Periodicals’, ‘Performing Arts’, and ‘Visual Arts’. By contrast, Volumes Two and Three examine, in A to Z fashion from Gwendolyn Bennett to Walter White, over thirty of the movement’s leading literary and intellectual voices. Within each volume, new topical and individual entry sections begin with short introductory essays and are followed by useful lists of representative works and a small selection of primary sources (an average of six pages in Volume One, with a pitiful single page of documentary material provided in the ‘Visual Arts’ section). By far the bulk of each section of Volume One is given over to a compilation of critical essays. While it is highly useful to have such a diverse range of scholarly perspectives collated in the same publication, this emphasis on exegesis does come at the expense of the primary material, much of which is arguably new and unfamiliar to student readers.

Of the three volumes, Volume One offers the best overall value. Through a variety of critical viewpoints, the five topical sections provide readers with the historical, contextual and theoretical tools essential to a basic understanding of the origins, significance, and key elements of the Harlem Renaissance. However, there are also many missed opportunities in this volume, but more noticeably in Volumes Two and Three, which are largely a result of the literary emphasis in the Critical Companion series. So, while most of the principal New Negro poets, playwrights, novelists, critics, editors, and journalists receive their due attention (attracting between 30 to 60 pages each), by contrast painters, sculptors, and photographers are discussed in a single section of Volume One (with just 50 pages given over to discussion of the work of Barthe, Douglas, Johnson, Motley, Parks, Savage, Van der Zee, and Woodruff). Furthermore, there’s surely a case to be made for more the inclusion of more (and perhaps also some colour) images and illustrations of the artworks alongside the critical commentaries on the visual artists. Unfortunately, in this encyclopaedia, the musicians and actors of the Harlem Renaissance don’t even fare as well as the poorly served visual artists. While Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Bessie Smith feature briefly as individuals in the general discussion of performing artists, none of these cultural giants receive any further consideration in Volumes Two or Three. Given that the music of the Harlem Renaissance reached a greater number and variety of people than the movement’s manifestoes and literary outpourings ever did, this is a serious oversight.

As a three volume reference work packed full of quality literary and cultural criticism, the Gale Critical Companion to the Harlem Renaissance provides readers with a concise source of core facts and key debates on the literary aspects of the movement. However, those looking for a broader and more inclusive cultural portrait of the Renaissance would do well to compare this title with the reference works mentioned above before purchasing.