What Mormon literature is worth reading? This page is dedicated to providing the resources to answer this question. Much Mormon Literature of quality is buried in the past or in the deluge of present publications that vary markedly in literary quality. You are invited to peruse the conversations over Mormon Literature that have been occuring at conferences and in print over the last few decades.

Awards in Mormon Literature

Essays on Mormon Literature and its History

Essays on Mormon Criticism

Reviews of Mormon Literature

Bibliography of Mormon Criticism

Awards in Mormon Literature

• Annual Awards of the Association for Mormon Letters
• Sunstone / D.K. Brown Awards in Fiction
• Dialogue Contests
• Utah Arts Council Awards
• Literature and Belief Writing Contest Awards

The History and State of Mormon Literature

• "Home Literature" (Orson F. Whitney, 1888) ("We shall yet have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own...")
• "Mormonism and Literature" (William Mulder, 1955)
• Introduction to A Believing People (Richard Cracroft and Neal Lambert, 1974)
• "Mormon Literature: Progress and Prospects" (Eugene England, 1995) For a no-frames version, click here
• Preface to Tending the Garden (Eugene England--briefer version of the preceding)

On Mormon Criticism

• Eugene England, "Great Books or True Religion? Defining the Mormon Scholar" Dialogue (Winter 1974)
• Bruce W. Jorgensen, "To Tell and Hear Stories: Let the Stranger Say."
• Richard Cracroft, "Attuning the Authentic Mormon Voice: Stemming the Sophic Tide in LDS Literature."
• Gideon Burton, "Should We Ask, 'Is this Mormon Literature?': Towards a Mormon Criticism."
• Michael Austin, "How to Be a Mormo-American; Or, the Function of Mormon Criticism at the Present Time"
• Richard P. Rust, "'Virtuous, Lovely, or of Good Report': Thoughts on a Latter-day Saint Literary Criticism"

Reviews of Mormon Literature

• AML-List and AML-List Archives
  Reviews of new titles appear regularly on the Association for Mormon Letters email list. These are not scholarly, but are generally quite informed and useful. Relevant commentary can also be found for older titles as these are discussed. Be sure to consult the archives of this active and informative email list.

• Book Reviews from the Newsletter of the Association for Mormon Letters
  Brief reviews and notices that have been printed previously in this newsletter can be accessed here soon.

• Proceedings of the Association for Mormon Letters
  More in-depth and scholarly discussion of Mormon Literature is to be found in these full-text versions of speeches given at the annual meeting of the Association for Mormon Letters.

• Periodicals
  Periodicals in which reviews of Mormon Literature regularly appear include the following (see What's Where: Journals and Periodicals Publishing Mormon Literature and Criticism for subscription and other information)
  • Dialogue
  • Sunstone
  • This People
  • BYU Magazine
  • Latter-Day Digest
  • Wasatch Review International
  • Exponent II
  • BYU Studies

Bibliography of Mormon Criticism

An influential early call, by a future apostle, for an excellent, faith-promoting literature by Mormons.

A perceptive and enthusiastic review of the Mormon writers, like Fisher and Whipple, who were suddenly gaining national prominence in the 1940s, and a survey of earlier "polemical" fiction, both anti-Mormon novels and those I have called "home literature."

A survey of reasons the maturing church, with its ideals that support artistic excellence and moral purpose, can expect "in the near future" literature that "without didacticism will present . . . the good side of our culture" (214).

A perceptive review of the strengths of the unusual genres of the first period, such as diaries and letters, and the problems of the second and third periods, in trying to deal with the great epic of Mormon history (he calls for a "smaller canvas," a focus on "the experience of living things, of very particular situations"). Mulder expects the church membership to mature in taste and "demand of Mormon writers . . . the authority of good writing, of truths made memorable."

A moving call, early in the fourth period, for a genuinely religious Mormon literature--not "written or read in the service of religion" but "an exercise in faith, an exercise in renewing our grounds of belief" (19-20).

A substantial review of Cracroft and Lambert, A Believing People, confirming and extending the editors' work in "excavating" and appreciating the pioneers' foundational work, sharpening the tools for analysis of the next two periods, and perceptively praising the developing work of the "authentic voices" in the new period.

An excellent survey of home literature and the "lost generation" and some contemporary period novelists, encouraging Mormon writers to a more faithful, even didactic, fiction.

A first attempt to define literary periods for Mormon literature, including announcement of the fourth, with its special combination of strengths from the earlier ones, and a description of the resources in Mormonism for unusual and powerful content and form.

A thorough history of the "expatriate" writers continuing to publish nationally and of the developing fourth period writers of what I call "faithful realism," with an excellent bibliography.

A survey of current Mormon fiction, including some novels still in manuscript, with a call for more daring, "fecund," and joyous work of the kind she calls "spiritual realism" (153).

A good survey of the "lost generation" and home literature novelists, including modern ones like Jack Weyland and Blaine Yorgason but unfortunately quite unaware of recent developments in "faithful realism." Does not, for instance, mention Douglas Thayer, Don Marshall, Levi Peterson, Orson Scott Card, or Linda Sillitoe.

A description of Mormon and American religious folk studies, arguing that the range should be extended, with less attention to "dramatic tales of the supernatural" (108-9) and more to "quiet lives of committed service . . . at the heart of the Mormon experience" (109). Later Wilson extended his appreciative vision to include what he calls the "family novel" (13), orally transmitted personal and group stories collected over time; see "In Praise of Ourselves: Stories to Tell," Brigham Young University Studies 30 (Winter 1990): 5-24.

Short historical and critical entries with select bibliographies appearing under the main heading "Literature, Mormon Writers of," including "Drama" (Robert A. Nelson), "Novels" (Richard H. Cracroft), "Personal Essays" (Donlu Dewitt Thayer), "Poetry" (Leslie Norris), and "Short Stories" (B. W. Jorgensen).

A call to Mormon writers, but especially readers, to "be patient, longsuffering" (48), to "listen to the voice of the Other" (49), and to measure Mormon literature by its unusual charity and openness.

A response to Jorgensen, calling for a literature that directly promotes orthodox ideals and values, which Cracroft sees as "more or less rooted in essences of spirituality shared by those" who "seek about them `the presence of the divine,' eschewing faithlessness, doubt, and rebellion" (52).

A perceptive argument, by a younger editor and critic, that the purpose of moral teaching and of mortal life is best achieved not through direct preaching of propositional knowledge but through realistic imitation of life in fiction, which can give new and profitable experience more efficiently than life itself.

A sympathetic survey and critique that brings up to date his 1954 essay and looks optimistically to the future, if Mormon writers can maintain both "a maturing craft and a strong sense of calling."

Bruce Jorgensen, "The Dark Way to the Tree," Encyclia, vol. 54, part 2, 1977.

Neal Lambert, "The Representation of Reality in Mormon Auto- biography," Dialogue (Summer 1978).