Called an American Zola and a worthy successor to Theodore Dreiser, James T. Farrell has hewn a secure place in contemporary literature.  His major work, the Studs Lonigan trilogy, comprising the three full-length novels, Young Lonigan, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan and Judgement Day, is no longer the subject of academic debate on the question whether it is art or sociology or photographic realism.  Now it is acknowledged on its own merits as a living document of our time.  By its elemental power and structural unity it has made its own way into the ranks of the few notable novels in American literature after having aroused the bitterest kind of controversy.  For the Modern Library Giant edition the author contributes a revealing introduction, in which he tells for the first time of the origins and the vicissitudes of his trilogy.