Tending the Garden
Essays on Mormon Literature

edited by
Eugene England &
Lavina Fielding Anderson

Signature Books, Salt Lake City, 1996.

Table of Contents:

1. Mormon Storytellers Dale Morgan

2. On Words and the Word of God:
The Delusions of a Mormon Literature Karle Keller

3. Mormondom's Lost Generation:
The Novelists of the 1940's Edward A. Geary

4. Toward A More Perfect Order Within:
Being the Confessions of an Unregenerate But Not Unrepentant
Mistruster of Mormon Literature Marden J. Clark

5. To Tell and Hear Stories:
Let the Stranger Say Bruce W. Jorgensen

6. Just the Fiction, Ma'am Tory C. Anderson

Part 2. Criticism of Major Generes and Works

7. Desirable Fruit:
Book of Mormon Imagery Richard Dilworth Rust

8. Literary Form and Historical Understanding:
Joseph Smith's First Vision Neal E. Lambert and Richard H. Cracroft

9. The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt:
Some Literary, Historical, and Critical Reflections R. A. Christmas

10. The Didactic Heresy as as Orthodox Tool:
B. H. Roberts as Writer of Home Literature Richard H. Cracroft

11. Juanita Brooks:
The Mormon Historian as Tragedian Levi S. Peterson

12. I, Eye, Aye:
A Personal Essay on Personal Essays Mary Lythgoe Bradford

13. Beyond "Jack Fiction":
Recent Achievement in the Mormon Novel Eugene England

14. Mormon Foklore:
Cut from the Marrow of Everyday Experience Wiliam A Wilson

15. From Walden Pond to the Great Salt Lake:
Econigraphy and Edgendered Species Acts in Walden and Refuge
Cecilia Konchar Farr and Phillip A Snyder

cover

This first book-length collection of essays on Mormon literature discusses such classic narratives as Joseph Smith’s first vision and Parley P. Pratt’s Autobiography, more recent experiments such as Levi Peterson’s The Backslider and Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge, and addresses the question of what constitutes Mormon aesthetics. In addition to describing the historical development of Mormon letters, essayists explore Mormon contributions to folklore, personal essay, home literature, novels, and historical tragedy. Among fifteen essays are: "Mormondom’s Lost Generation: The Novelists of the 1940s" by Edward A. Geary, "Literary Form and Historical Understanding: Joseph Smith’s First Vision" by Neal E. Lambert & Richard H. Cracroft, " Juanita Brooks: The Mormon Historian as Tragedian" by Levi S. Peterson, "Beyond “Jack Fiction”: Recent Achievement in the Mormon Novel" by Eugene England, and "The Mormon Folklore: Cut from the Marrow of Everyday Experience" by William A. Wilson.

about the editors

Eugene England is past president of the Association for Mormon Letters and Professor of English at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. He is editor/co-editor of Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems and Bright Angels and Familiars: Contemporary Mormon Stories. Lavina Fielding Anderson, also past president of AML, is the former associate editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, president of Editing, Inc., and editor of the Journal of Mormon History.

title page

Tending the Garden:
Essays on Mormon Literature
Edited by Lavina Fielding Anderson and Eugene England
Signature Books
Salt Lake City 1996

copyright page

Cover illustration: Red Wall by Royden Card, 1992,
acrylic on canvas

Cover design: Julie Easton

Printed on acid-free paper.
© 1996 Signature Books, Inc. All rights reserved.
Signature Books is a registered trademark of Signature Books, Inc.
Composed and printed in the United States of America.

99 98 97 96 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tending the Garden : essays on Mormon literature / edited by
Eugene England and Lavina Fielding Anderson.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-56085-019-1
1. American literature—Mormon authors—History and criticism.
2. Mormons—United States—Intellectual life. 3. Mormons in
literature. I. England, Eugene. II. Anderson, Lavina Fielding.
PS1523.M66T46 1995 810.9'352283—dc20 94-48077 CIP