Essays in Arabic Literary Biography Vol. 3 (1850-1950) is the third and last in a series of works that select 40 authors from a particular time period in Arabic literary history and invite leading experts to contribute biographical essays on them. In the case of this final volume, the period involved is that between the purported earlier phases in the emergence of a movement of cultural revival in the 19th century and the Arabic-speaking world’s achievement of independence in the wake of the conclusion of the Second World War.

The essays, which discuss authors in a variety of literary genres and across the spectrum of the region concerned—from Iraq in the East to Tunisia in the West—provide clear evidence of the gradually changing roles of the indigenous and the imported which are an intrinsic feature of the movement known in Arabic as al-nahda (cultural revival) and the way in which Arab littérateurs chose to respond to the inspiration that such changes inevitably engendered.

Each essay is complete in and of itself, listing the author’s complete works (and translations of them), and tracing the different phases of his or her life through an analysis of the principal works involved. The essays conclude with a selected bibliography of reference works.