Scholarship and criticism on Ursula Le Guin

• List of scholarship and criticism on Ursula Le Guin: Dissertations and Theses
• List of scholarship and criticism on Ursula Le Guin: Reviews of Le Guin's Publications
• List of scholarship and criticism on Ursula Le Guin: Interviews with Ursula Le Guin
• List of scholarship and criticism on Ursula Le Guin: Reviews of Le Guin's Publications
• List of scholarship and criticism on Ursula Le Guin: Bibliographies
• List of scholarship and criticism on Ursula Le Guin: Monographs
• List of scholarship and criticism on Ursula Le Guin: Papers and Essays

Reviews

Stanislaw Lem.

• SF Commentary 24, November 1971, pages 22-24. Review of Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. Originally published in Quarber Merkur no. 25 and translated from the German by Franz Rottensteiner and revised by Bruce Gillespie.

Robin McKinley.

• "Book Review: Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea." The New York Times Book Review, v. 95 (May 20 1990) page 38.

Nicholas Whyte.

• Review of The Dispossessed. Aug. 20, 2001. Available at http://explorers.whyte.com/sf/disp.htm; last visited, 2003-Feb-18.

James Tiptree, Jr.

• Review of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven. Universe SF Review 5, Sept. - Oct. 1975.

Monographs and Collections

Harold Bloom.

• Editor. Ursula K. Le Guin (anthology)
• Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" (Chelsea House Pub.: 1987; ISBN 155546064X) (Modern Critical Interpretations series) anthology.

Elizabeth Cummins.

• Understanding Ursula K. Le Guin. Revised Edition. (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1993.) (Understanding Contemporary American Literature).

Joe De Bolt.

• Editor, Ursula K. Le Guin: Voyager to Inner Lands and to Outer Space. Associated Faculty Press, 1978 (ISBN 0804692297); Kennikat Press, 1979, 1991.

Karen Joy Fowler, editor.

• 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin (2010) (festschrift)

Martin Harry Greenberg and J. D. Olander, editors.

• Ursula K. Le Guin (1979) anthology

Charlotte Spivack.

• Ursula K. Le Guin (Twayne Pub.; ISBN 0805774300; reprint ed. March 1984).

Kathryn Ross Wayne.

• Redefining Moral Education: Life, Le Guin and Language (Austin & Winfield: Lanham, Maryland, 1996, ISBN 1880921855; 162 pp). Examines The Word for World Is Forest and Always Coming Home, and analyzes Le Guin's work in the context of ecofeminism and other ecological movements. Looks specifically at education and language.

Donna R. White.

• Dancing With Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics (Ontario: Camden House: March 1999; ISBN 1571130349)

Bibliographies

Bratman, David S.

• Compiled. "Ursula K. Le Guin: A Primary Bibliography", Preliminary edition, February 1995. 42 pages. Contact d.bratman@genie.com for more information ...

Cogell, Elizabeth C. Ursula K. Le Guin

A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (G. K. Hall: 1983, ISBN 0816181551)

Dissertations and Theses

Bittner, Jim.

• Approaches to the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin (Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1979)

assorted list

Rosemarie Arbur.

• "Beyond Feminism, the Self Intact: Woman's Place in the Work of Ursula K. Le Guin" in Thomas J. Remington, Selected Proceedings of the 1978 Science Fiction Research Association National Conference (Cedar Falls, Iowa: University of Northern Iowa, 1979). pages 146-163.

Baggeson, Soren.

• "Utopian and Dystopian Pessimism: Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest and Tiptree's "We Who Stole the Dream." Science Fiction Studies v. 14 (1987): pages 34-43.

Barbour, Douglas.

• "The Lathe of Heaven: Taoist Dream," Algol, no. 21 (Nov. 1973): pp. 22-24.
• "Wholeness and Balance in the Hainish Novels of Le Guin." Science-Fiction Studies v. 1, 3 (Spring 1974): pp. 164-172.
• "Wholeness and Balance: An Addendum," Science-Fiction Studies 2, 3 (Nov. 1975): pp. 248-249.

Marleen Barr.

• "Charles Bronson, Samurai, and Other Feminine Images: A Transactive Response to The Left Hand of Darkness" in Future Females: A Critical Anthology edited by Marlene S. Barr (Bowling Green State University Popular Press: 1981), pp. 138-154.

Berkley, Miriam.

• "Ursula K. Le Guin." Publishers Weekly v. 229 (May 23 1986), page 72.

Cadden, Mike. Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre

Fiction for Children and Adults. New York and London: Routledge, Inc., 2005. (Volume 33 of the series "Children's Literature and Culture," General Editor: Jack Zipes) 203 pp.

Cadden, Mike.

• "Taking Different Roads to the City: The Development of Ursula K. Le Guin's Young Adult Novels." Extrapolation 47.3 (Winter 2006): 427-44. Special issue on Ursula K. Le Guin.
• "Purposeful Movement Among People and Places: The Sense of Home in Ursula K. Le Guin?s Fiction for Children and Adults." Extrapolation 41.4 (Winter 2000): 338-50.
• "Speaking to the Needs of Genre: Le Guin's Ethics of Audience." The Lion and the Unicorn: A Critical Journal of Children's Literature 24.1 (2000): 128-42. (Reprinted in Children's Literature Review 91 (2003), Gale Publishing)
• "Speaking Across the Spaces Between Us: Ursula Le Guin's Dialogic Use of Character in Children's and Adult Literature." Para*doxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 2.3-4 (1996): 516-30.

Fadiman, Anne.

• "Ursula K Le Guin: Voyager to the Inner Land." Life v. 9 (April 1986), pages 23-25.

Fitting, Peter.

• "The Turn from Utopia in Recent Feminist Fiction." in Libby Falk Jones, Sarah Webster Goodwin, editors, Feminism, Utopia, and Narrative. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. pages 141-158. about: Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Suzette Haden Elgin's Native Tongue, Zoe Ann Fairbairns Benefits, and Ursula K Le Guin's Always Coming Home

Hatfield, Len.

• "From Master to Brother: Shifting the Balance of Authority in Ursula K. Le Guin's Farthest Shore and Tehanu." Children's Literature v. 21 (1993). Response by Perry Nodelman in Children's Literature 23 (1995).

Keulen, Margarete.

• Radical Imagination: Feminist Conceptions of the Future in Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy, and Sally Miller Gearhart.

Klarer, Mario.

• "Gender and the `Simultaneity Principle': Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed." Mosaic (Winnipeg, Manitoba) v. 25 (Spring 1992), pages 107-121.

Lefanu, Sarah.

• "The King Is Pregnant." Guardian Jan. 3, 2004. Available at http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4828125-110738,00.html . (on The Left Hand of Darkness)
• Essay, Spare Rib 1975 (on The Left Hand of Darkness).

Parrinder, P.

• "The Alien Encounter: Or, Ms. Brown and Mrs. Le Guin." Science Fiction Studies Volume 3, Part 1. (1976). Reprinted in P. Parrinder (ed.) SF: A Critical Guide: London: Longman, 1979: pages 148-161.

Pegg, Barry.

• "Down to Earth: Terrain, Territory, and the Language of Realism in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed." Michigan Academician XXVII Number 4 (August 1995), pages 481-492.

Rass, Rebecca.

• Ursula Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness": A Critical Commentary (Monarch Notes). Hungry Minds, Inc.: 1990 (ISBN 067168759X)

Reginald, Robert, and George Slusser, eds.

• Zephyr and Boreas, Winds of Change in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin (San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1997)

Rhodes, Jewel P.

• "Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness: Androgyny and the Feminist Utopian vision." Women and Utopia. Ed. Marleen Barr and Nicholas O. Smith. New York: University Press of America, 1983.

Rochelle, Warren G.

• Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin (Liverpool Univ. Press: 2000; ISBN 0853238863)

Science Fiction Studies

• Volume 2, Part 3. Number 7. (November 1975). Special Issue, entitled "The Science Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin."

Selinger, Bernard.

• Le Guin and Identity in Contemporary Fiction (Studies in Speculative Fiction, No. 16); UMI Research Press: November 1987 (ISBN 083571831X)

Slusser, George Edgar.

• The Farthest Shores of Ursula K. Le Guin (chapbook, 1976)

Spector, Judith A.

• "The Functions of Sexuality in the Science Fiction of Russ, Piercy, and Le Guin." in Donald Palumbo, editor, Erotic Universe: Sexuality and Fantastic Literature. New York: Greenwood, 1986. pages 197-207.

Welton, Ann.

• "Earthsea Revisited: Tehanu and Feminism (Ursula Le Guin has never shrunk from addressing large issues)" Voice of Youth Advocates Volume 14 (April 1991) pages 14-16. Related: Miles, Margaret A., Discussion, Volume 14, December 1991, pages 301-302.

Margaret A. Miles.

• "'Earthsea Revisited' Revisited': Reply to A. Welton." Voice of Youth Advocates v. 14 (Dec. 1991): pp. 301-302.

Alice Mills.

• "Burning Women in Ursula K. Le Guin's Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea."

Victoria Myers.

• "Conversational Technique in Ursula Le Guin: A Speech-Act Analysis." Science Fiction Studies v. 10 (Nov. 1983): pp. 306-316.

Jewel P. Rhodes.

• "Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness: Androgyny and the Feminist Utopian vision." Women and Utopia. Ed. Marleen Barr and Nicholas O. Smith. New York: University Press of America, 1983.

George Woodcock.

• "The Equilibrations of Freedom: Part 2: Notes on the Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin," Georgia Straight v. 10 (Oct. 28 - Nov. 4, 1976): pp. 6-7.

J. R. Wytenbroek.

• "Always Coming Home: Pacificism and Anarchy in Le Guin's Latest Utopia." Extrapolation v. 28 (Winter 1987), pages 330-339.

Watson, Ian.

• "The Forest as Metaphor for Mind: 'The Word for World is Forest' and 'Vaster Than Empires and More Slow.'" Science Fiction Studies Volume 2, No. 3 (Nov 1975): pages 231-236.
• "Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven and the Role of Sick: The False Reality as Mediator." Science-Fiction Studies v. 2, no. 1 (#5) (March 1975): pp. 67-75.

Walker, Jeanne Murray.

• "Myth, Exchange and History in The Left Hand of Darkness" in Science Fiction Studies v. 6 (1979).

Welton, Ann.

• "Earthsea Revisited: Tehanu and Feminism (Ursula Le Guin has never shrunk from addressing large issues)" Voice of Youth Advocates Volume 14 (April 1991) pages 14-16. Related: Miles, Margaret A., Discussion, Volume 14, December 1991, pages 301-302.

White, Donna R.

• Dancing With Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics. (1999)

Williams, Donna Glee.

• "The Moons of Le Guin and Heinlein." Science Fiction Studies v. 21 (July 1994) pages 164-172.

Victor Urbanowicz.

• "Personal and Political in The Dispossessed." Science-Fiction Studies, v. 5, no. 2 (No. 15) (July 1978): pp. 110-118.

Theall, Donald F.

• "The Art of Social-Science Fiction: The Ambiguous Utopian Dialectics of Ursula K. Le Guin." Science-Fiction Studies, No. 7 (Nov. 1975): pp. 256-275.

Shippey, T. A.

• "The Magic Art and the Evolution of Words: Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy," Mosaic v. 10, no. 2 (Winter 1977): pp. 147-163.

Rhodes, Jewel P.

• "Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness: Androgyny and the Feminist Utopian vision." Women and Utopia. Ed. Marleen Barr and Nicholas O. Smith. New York: University Press of America, 1983.

Rabkin, Eric S.

• "Determinism, Free Will and Point of View in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness," Extrapolation v. 20, no. 1 (Spring 1979): pp. 5-19.

Remington, Thomas J. Extrapolation v. 18-19, n. 1 (Dec. 1976)

pp. 28-41.

"A Touch of Difference, A Touch of Love: Theme in Three Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin ["Nine Lives," WWF, "VEMS"]." Extrapolation 18 (Dec. 1976): 28-41.

Plank, Robert.

• "Ursula K. Le Guin and the Decline of Romantic Love," Science-Fiction Studies, v. 3, no. 1 (March 1976): pp. 36-43.

Porter, David L.

• "The Politics of Le Guin's Opus," Science-Fiction Studies, v. 2, no. 3 (#7) (Nov. 1975): pp. 243-248.

Peel, Ellen (Susan).

• "Reading Piebald Patterns in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness." in Women of Other Worlds: Excursions through Science Fiction and Feminism, edited by Helen Merrick and Tess Williams, University of Western Australia Press: Nedlands, 1999: pp. 29-40.

Pegg, Barry.

• "Down to Earth: Terrain, Territory, and the Language of Realism in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed." Michigan Academician XXVII Number 4 (August 1995), pages 481-492.

Rafail Nudelman.

• "An Approach to the Structure of Le Guin's SF," Science-Fiction Studies, v. 2, no. 3 (Nov. 1975): pp. 210-220.

Wendy Pearson

• "The Queer as Traitor, the Traitor as Queer: Denaturalizing Concepts of Nationhood, Species, and Sexuality", Chapter 7 in Flashes of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from The War of the Worlds Centennial, Nineteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, ed. by David Ketterer. 1998. Greenwood Press: 2004. ISBN 0313316074. pp. 77-92.

"I intend in this chapter to demonstrate the ways in which two examples of speculative fiction denaturalize Western discourses of nationhood, species, and sexuality. ... This chapter examines the roles of the two traitors, Estraven and Nicholas Sanders, in, respectively, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and Eleanor Arnason's Ring of Swords (1993) in order to reveal how and to what extent works of speculative fiction are able to ironically replay the linkage between queerness and treachery in order to interrogate the naturalization of the concepts of nationhood, species, and, in particular, sexuality."

Holland, Norman N.

• "You, U. K. Le Guin" in Future Females: A Critical Anthology edited by Marlene S. Barr (Bowling Green State University Popular Press: 1981), pp. 125-137.

Galbreath, Robert.

• "Holism, Openness and the Other: Le Guin's Use of the Occult," Science-Fiction Studies 7, 1 (March 1980): pp. 36-48.

Merritt Abrash.

• "Le Guin's The Field of Vision: A Minority View on Ultimate Truth." Extrapolation v. 26 (Spring 1985), pages 5-15.

additional

Entries in Reference Books:

Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Vol 9, Gale, 1992

Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography 1968-1988, Gale, 1989

Contemporary Literary Criticism Vol 8, Gale, 1978; Vol 13, 1980; Vol 22, 1982; Vol 45, 1987; Vol 71, 1992;

Dictionary of Literary Biography by Andrew Gordon, Vol 52, Gale, 1986 Children's Literature Review Vol 3, Gale, 1978; Vol 28, 1992

Dictionary of Literary Biography by Brian Attebery, Vol 8, Gale, 1981 Articles and Books:

"Ursula Le Guin Issue" of Science-Fiction Studies, March 1976

Bittner, James: Approaches to the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin , UMI Research Press, 1984; June 1989 ISBN 0835715736.

Bloom, Harold: "Ursula K. Le Guin" in Modern Critical Views, 1985; "Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness" in Modern Critical Interpretations, 1987

Bucknall, B. J.: Ursula K. Le Guin, Ungar, 1981

Olander, Joseph D. and Martin H. Greenberg: Ursula Le Guin, Taplinger, 1979

Rochelle, Warren G.: Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. LeGuin, Liverpool Univ Press, 2001

Selinger, Bernard: Le Guin and Identity in Contemporary Fiction, 1987

Slusser, G. E.: The Farthest Shores of Ursula K. Le Guin, Borgo Press, 1976.

Spivack, Charlotte: Ursula K. Le Guin, Twayne, 1984

Wayne, Kathryn Ross: Redefining Moral Education: Life, Le Guin, and Language, 1995

White, Donna R.: Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics 1998

David Bratman

• Ursula K. Le Guin: A Primary Bibliography, compiled by David S. Bratman (Oakland, CA: Potlatch 4, 1995). This bibliography is extraordinarily comprehensive. It can be purchased for $12 from the editor:

David Bratman

P.O. Box 662

Los Altos CA 94023

email: dbratman@genie.idt.net

More information on the bibliography can be found at his web page, at http://www.stanford.edu/~dbratman/leguin.html

• [http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html Paul

Brians' Study Guide on The Dispossessed]

• [http://julmara.ce.chalmers.se/SF_archive/SFguide/LEGUIN%2CURSULA.K

Reviews from The Good Reading Guide]

• [http://julmara.ce.chalmers.se/SF_archive/SFguide/LEGUIN.URSULA Reviews

from The Good Reading Guide]

• Le Guin and Anarchism (coming soon)