A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South is an epic editorial undertaking, comprising no less than thirty-four essays written mostly by scholars trained and employed in Britain. The book is divided into three parts, the first of which is by far the shortest, consisting solely of an introduction by Richard Gray. Given the vast chronological and thematic range of the volume as a whole, it is surprising that the introduction is so heavily oriented toward contemporary southern fiction. This might have something to do with the fact that it draws very heavily on the sixth chapter of Gray's Southern Aberrations (2000). It is not the only time that the Companion relies on previously published work: to cite one other example, Richard Godden's essay on Faulkner recapitulates passages from his Fictions of Labor (1997). If the Companion is aimed at undergraduates who have not read such monographs, then such (unacknowledged) recycling is perhaps understandable. But for readers better versed in recent southern studies, the sense of déjà-vu is disappointing. Moreover, while many of the essays are models of the concise survey essay, others (including Godden's) seem too demanding for undergraduates. While no such volume can or should sustain a foolish consistency over 650 pages, the varying approaches in the Companion sometimes make for an uneven reading experience; indeed, even the form of citation varies considerably from essay to essay.

The exhaustive range of Part 2, “Themes and Issues,” merits praise. Rather than focussing on literature or a narrow definition of culture, the editors have solicited some fine essays on subjects ranging from music (John White) and religion (Charles Reagan Wilson) to sports (Diane Roberts) and popular culture (Allison Graham). All of these contributions are suitable for undergraduate courses on the US South, but will engage more experienced South-watchers too. Other contributions reveal (and sometimes reflect on) the difficult definitional issues that arise when compiling a volume like this. For example, Mary C. Fuller's essay discusses the Jamestown colonists as the “first southerners,” yet Fuller herself acknowledges in the second sentence that it is difficult “to argue for Jamestown as an origin for Southern history or culture” (29); after all, the “southernness” of Jamestown is retrospective (John Smith et al. did not see themselves as southerners). One might also ask why Jamestown is privileged over the Spanish colony at St. Augustine, Florida, established some forty-two years earlier. Elsewhere Robert Brinkmeyer has the unenviable task of reinventing the Southern Renaissance at a time when “[f]or some, th[e] opening up of the canon has not gone far enough: some have set out to erase the Southern literary renaissance altogether” (148). Brinkmeyer seeks to expand the “Tate paradigm” long used by southern literary critics to define the Renaissance to encompass writers whom Allen Tate himself would never have included: African American writers, protest writers, and so on. It is an impressive high-wire act between latter-day neo-Agrarians and those more radical revisionists, but one that might not satisfy either camp: the former may resent the redefinition of the Tate paradigm, while the latter may bemoan its retention.

One of the standout essays in this section is Jerry Phillips's Bakhtinian analysis of slave narratives. Linda Tate's overview of Appalachian literature will be valuable to both students and teachers (like me) who know less about that sub-genre of southern literature than they should. Mick and Ben Gidley's essay emphasizing the Native American presence in the South both counterbalances the focus on colonial origins in Fuller's essay and complements recent critical work by Annette Trefzer, Eric Gary Anderson, and Melanie R. Benson.

Given that Part 2 successfully bears out Gray's observation that “we are faced, not so much with Southern culture really, as with Southern cultures” (11), some readers will be disappointed that Part 3, “Individuals and Movements,” retreats into overwhelmingly literary analysis. Why devote an essay to Eudora Welty, but not Elvis Presley? In some of the single-author essays, the problematic issue of “southernness” surfaces again; for example, Henry Claridge pointedly observes that Poe's identification as a “southern gothic” writer arises from later southern literary critics' desire to costume him as an antecedent to Faulkner and O'Connor. The most valuable essays in this section focus on movements, rather than individuals: John Grammer offers a wide-ranging and consistently illuminating account of southwestern humor, while the successive contributions by Jill Terry (on oral culture and southern fiction) and Sharon Monteith (on recent southern women's writing) dovetail effectively. Monteith's essay is also notable for demonstrating the most expansive vision of contemporary southern writing, courtesy of her penetrating discussion of immigrant writers. By contrast, a couple of the essays in this section seem decidedly retrograde, taking a neo-Agrarian approach that elides or ignores other critical approaches to the writers under discussion – including the Agrarians themselves.

The dramatic transformation of southern studies over the last ten years or so, including the emergence of the “new southern studies” movement among younger, mostly US-based, scholars, means that even a wide-ranging and broadly useful book like this one is liable to date quite quickly. Notably, the Companion ignores the literary and cultural links between the US South and the Caribbean – probably the biggest growth area in (new) southern studies, and a subject that could have been addressed in the three-year gap between the 2004 hardback and this new paperback edition.