McCullers' fiction, including ""The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter"", ""The Member of the Wedding"", and ""The Ballad of the Sad Cafe"", established her as a key voice of the 1940s and '50s. Critics have praised her lyrical evocations of the yearning for love, always tempered by a harsh acknowledgement of the futility of the quest. This new edition of full-length critical essays offers illuminating discussions of McCullers' work and its place in the American canon. This latest title in the ""Bloom's Modern Critical Views"" series is bolstered by a chronology, a bibliography, notes on the contributors, and an introduction from noted literary scholar Harold Bloom.