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Cohen-Williams, Anita. 2001. Archaeology in Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography. San Diego: Ebook.

Shortly after I started using the world wide web, around 1994, I heard about Anita Cohen-Williams' Archaeology in Fiction bibliography. An archaeologist/librarian, Cohen-Williams had collected hundreds of bibliographic references to novels about archaeology or archaeologists, and placed this amazing list on the web. Always a voracious reader, I was delighted to find everything from high fiction (Vance Bourjaily and Willa Cather) to rubbishy romance (Elizabeth Cadell and Glenna Finley) to work by archaeologists (Glyn Daniel and Jacquetta Hawkes) to science fiction (Jules Verne, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Silverberg). I printed out this enormous list and rushed to my local library and bookstores, where I spent many, many hours tracking down obscure novels.

Cohen-Williams, who wears many hats including running the Histarch and Subarch electronic email discussion lists, is currently selling the latest version of the bibliography as a downloadable Adobe PDF file. If you're looking for a perfect gift for that fiction-loving friend of yours, this might do very nicely indeed.

Note (2010): Anita's book is apparently out of print.