This volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on the perennial theme. Essays survey the critical conversation regarding the theme, explore its cultural and historical contexts, and offer close and comparative readings of key.

On "Coming of Age" -- Critical contexts : Critical reception -- In search of Mildred Taylor's womanists: feminist agency in the Logan family novels -- Coming of age in history -- "Not now ... not yet": developmental difficulties in Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea" -- Critical readings : Coming of age in Homer's Ithaca -- Coming of age in Shakespeare -- A romantic poet comes of age over and over again -- The varieties of adolescent experience: coming of age in Alcott's Little women -- Irony and moral development in adventures of Huckleberry Finn -- Stephen Dedalus and the other: interiority, language, and gender in A portrait of the artist as a Young man -- "Missing everybody": language and identity in The catcher in the rye -- Coming of age in Bronzeville: Gwendolyn Brooks's Annie Allen -- Ready or not: Antonio Marez y Luna is thrown into the world of Rudolfo Anaya's Bless me Ultima -- Song for a murdered cousin: violence in The woman warrior -- School stories: education, coming of age, and the American Indian literary tradition.