A great deal of published material is available on the works of Edward Albee. Scott Giantvalley's Edward Albee: A Reference Guide (1987), the most exhaustive bibliographic guide to date, is almost as thick as a Russian novel, and with almost twenty years having now passed since he compiled it, it could be at least half as thick again. The bibliography that follows in this volume is necessarily select, but first-time students of Albee may also appreciate some guidance to circumscribe their research further.

Aside from Albee’s plays themselves, there are a handful of indispensable books for anyone interested in reading around them. The importance of Mel Gussow’s 1999 biography Edward Albee: A Singular Journey (published in paperback in 2001), written with Albee’s full cooperation, should be apparent from the number of times it is cited by contributors to this book. It is listed here, in the bibliography, under “critical studies,” for it is that too. Equally important is Philip C. Kolin’s collection of Conversations with Edward Albee (1988), which collects all the most useful interviews given by Albee between the 1960s and 1980s. Kolin’s other major contribution is Critical Essays on Edward Albee , edited with J. Madison Davis (1986), which selects not only key scholarly texts from the previous two decades, but also a judicious range of review material written in response to each of Albee’s major premieres.