THERE IS no chart to the Life and Literature of the Southwest. An attempt to put it all into an alphabetically arranged encyclopedia would be futile. All guides to knowledge are too long or too short. This one at the outset adds to its length--perhaps to its usefulness--by citing other general reference works and a few anthologies. _Books of the Southwest: A General Bibliography_, by Mary Tucker, published by J. J. Augustin, New York, 1937, is better on Indians and the Spanish period than on Anglo-American culture. _Southwest Heritage: A Literary History with Bibliography_, by Mabel Major, Rebecca W. Smith, and T. M. Pearce, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1938, revised 1948, takes up the written material under the time-established heads of Fiction, Poetry, Drama, etc., with due respect to chronological development. _A Treasury of Southern Folklore_, 1949, and _A Treasury of Western Folklore_, 1951, both edited by B. A. Botkin and both published by Crown, New York, are so liberal in the extensions of folklore and so voluminous that they amount to literary anthologies. Of possible use in working out certain phases of life and literature common to the Southwest as well as to the West and Middle West are the following academic treatises: _The Frontier in American Literature_, by Lucy Lockwood Hazard, New York, 1927; _The Literature of the Middle Western Frontier_, by Ralph Leslie Rusk, New York, 1925; _The Prairie and the Making of Middle America_, by Dorothy Anne Dondore, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1926; _The Literature of the Rocky Mountain West 1803-1903_, by L. J. Davidson and P. Bostwick, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939; and _The Rediscovery of the Frontier_, by Percy H. Boynton, Chicago, 1931. Anyone interested in vitality in any phase of American writing will find Vernon L. Parrington's _Main Currents in American Thought_ (three vols.), New York, 1927-39, an opener-up of avenues. Perhaps the best anthology of southwestern narratives is _Golden Tales of the Southwest_, selected by Mary L. Becker, New York, 1939. Two anthologies of southwestern writings are _Southwesterners Write_, edited by T. M. Pearce and A. P. Thomason, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1946, and _Roundup Time_, edited by George Sessions Perry, Whittlesey House, New York, 1943. Themes common to the Southwest are represented in _Western Prose and Poetry_, an anthology put together by Rufus A. Coleman, New York, 1932, and in _Mid Country: Writings from the Heart of America_, edited by Lowry C. Wimberly, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1945. For the southern tradition that has flowed into the Southwest Franklin J. Meine's _Tall Tales of the Southwest_, New York, 1930, OP, is the best anthology published. It is the best anthology of any kind that I know of. _A Southern Treasury of Life and Literature_, selected by Stark Young, New York, 1937, brings in Texas.