As one would expect in the case of this author, the coverage of women writersof both the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesis excellent;the same appliesto poetry, particularlymoderismo and the avant-garde,and also, very markedly,to theatre, a genre that is generally shrugged aside in works of this kind. In addition, Hart's comprehensive coverage of the genres means that the essay form appearsin every relevantchapter.FromChapter 2, Hart usesa briefsummaryof the stateof literary print culture of the time as a device to link the various chapters. This serves to contextualize individualworksthroughthepartplayedby censorshipin the colonial period, the increasing professionalization of the author towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the commodification of the narrative as from the Boom. Each chapter is set out with admirable clarity and is supported by a reading list, something thathelps to keepfootnotes to a minimum. There are certaindeficiencies,noticeable in the coverage of Argentineliterature. Hart gives prominence to the popular literatureof this country at the end of the nineteenth century, to show how mass literacy had an impact on creative writing, but the coverage of works of high literature in Argentina is deficient and lacks balance. For example, Sylvia Molloy's lesbian novel, En breve cdrcel (198I), is given as much space as MartinFierro(1872, 1879). Don Segundo Sombra (I926) does not figure at all since the regionalist novel of the I920S is represented by one text, R6mulo Gallegos'sDoraBdrbara ( 929). This means that the gauchesqueis not only under-representedbutdistortedbytheundue attentiongivento EduardoGonzalez's popular, melodramaticportrayalof the gaucho in his serializednovel JuanMoreira (1879). While the coverage of the Boom authorsis, predictably,most considerable, the literature that emerged from Argentina's Dirty War barely figures. Piglia's outstanding oblique comment on this period of Argentina's history, Respiracion artificial (i980), is not even mentioned, nor are the plays about the disappearedby Griselda Gambaro. Also missing from the Argentine canon are two important mavericksof the avant-gardeperiod, Macedonio Fernandezand Roberto Arlt. Clearly,any reviewerof thiskind of text can play the game of 'Spot the gap', but those I have indicated are too important to be overlooked, particularlysince they apply to one of the very richestliteraturesin Spanishof the entire continent. There is also one error of interpretation that cannot be shrugged aside, namely the description of Asturias'sEl Senor Presidente (I946) as a novel that 'is narrated in a straightforwardRealist way' (p. 0o6).This text has been describedmore accurately by Gerald Martin as 'the first fully-fledged Surrealist novel in Latin America' (Londonand New York:Verso, 1989,p. 149). In its present hardbackform, Hart's Companion, which is geared to the needs of graduatestudentsand general readers,may be describedas an accessiblebook at a ratherinaccessibleprice. It is to be hoped, therefore,that the publisherswill shortly produce a less expensive edition. Sales could also be boosted by giving in English the titlesof all the literarytextsthat arementioned in the Companion. QUEEN MARY AND WESTFIELD COLLEGE, LONDON VERITY SMITH Narcisohermitico. SorJuanaInesdela CruzyJose LezamaLima. By AiDABEAUPIED. (Hispanic Studies Textual Research and Criticism, I3) Liverpool: Liverpool UniversityPress. I997. 24I pp. ?25.50 (paperbound I5). The figure of HermesTrismegistos, Hellenistic name for the Egyptian god Thoth (considered by his followers to be the inventor of writing), might at first seem a slender thread for linking the work of two Spanish-Americanpoets whose writings span nearly three hundred years of literaryhistory. But not only were Sor Juana As one would expect in the case of this author, the coverage of women writersof both the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesis excellent;the same appliesto poetry, particularlymoderismo and the avant-garde,and also, very markedly,to theatre, a genre that is generally shrugged aside in works of this kind. In addition, Hart's comprehensive coverage of the genres means that the essay form appearsin every relevantchapter.FromChapter 2, Hart usesa briefsummaryof the stateof literary print culture of the time as a device to link the various chapters. This serves to contextualize individualworksthroughthepartplayedby censorshipin the colonial period, the increasing professionalization of the author towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the commodification of the narrative as from the Boom. Each chapter is set out with admirable clarity and is supported by a reading list, something thathelps to keepfootnotes to...