This first book-length study to focus on Peggy Glanville-Hicks, the important twentieth-century composer and critic who was born in Australia in 1912 and who established her reputation in the U.S. in the late 1940s and 1950s, documents the composer's music, performances, and critical writings, as well as the work of previous biographers, bibliographers, and interviewers. This volume, the most recent in Greenwood's respected series of research tools in the field of music, contains a comprehensive biography of the composer that draws on the writings and recollections of many of the composer's close friends and colleagues. Deborah Hayes' compilation of the great amount of material about Glanville-Hicks and her music found in journals, books, newspapers, dictionaries, and encyclopedias of music also contains alphabetical, chronological, and by-genre lists of works with details of first performances and other significant performances, a discography, and an annotated bibliography that includes abstracts and quotations from performance reviews. Bibliographic entries are keyed to lists of works, recordings, and performances. The work is indexed as well.

The work is divided into six cross-referenced chapters beginning with a biography that gives a chronological account of the composer's life and examines recurring themes in her work. The second chapter lists 70 compositions in chronological order by year of composition, from 1931 to 1989, and includes information on publisher, duration, instrumentation, and commission. Premieres and other selected performances are indicated and references are given to recordings and to bibliographical items. A publishers directory, an alphabetical list of works, and a classified list complete the chapter which is followed by a discography of Glanville-Hicks' commercial recordings, both in and out of print. Chapter four's annotated listing of the composer's writings in chronological order from 1945 to 1989 documents the scope of her interests and provides a record of this period in American musical history in the words of a perceptive, articulate listener and active participant. Alphabetized by author and title, music reviews, performance reviews, feature articles, publicity items, and press announcements are listed with annotations in Chapter five. Items from all previous Glanville-Hicks bibliographies and from library clipping files and indexes are included no matter how brief the reference. A final chapter devoted to archival resources lists materials by library in alphabetical order by country and name. This informative and easy-to-use volume will be a necessary addition to the reference collections of college and university music libraries and would be useful for courses in Twentieth-Century Music, Opera, Art Song, Music of the U.S., American Studies, and Women's Studies.