The secondary literature on phenomenology is vast, and the newcomer is apt to be bewildered by the variety. As a way into the wilderness, I have assembled a number of works that are, in most cases, readily available, and, in all cases, likely to be useful to students who are still feeling their way around phenomenology. Many of these volumes have their own bibliographies, which will direct you to further, more specialized reading.
Michael Hammond, Jane Howarth & Russell Keat, Understanding Phenomenology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) is an introduction to the phenomenology of Husserl, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty that is geared in each case to particular works or portions thereof (Cartesian Meditations for Husserl, The Transcendence of the Ego and parts of Being and Nothingness for Sartre and Phenomenology of Perception for Merleau-Ponty). The volume is currently out of print, but should not be too difficult to locate. For a comprehensive introduction to the phenomenological movement, see Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology (London: Routledge, 2000). The book is organized chronologically and biographically, with chapters devoted to the "usual suspects" (Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty), as well as ones on Brentano, Gadamer, Levinas, Arendt, and Derrida. Dermot Moran & Timothy Mooney (eds), The Phenomenology Reader (London: Routledge, 2002) is perhaps the only comprehensive anthology of the phenomenological movement available in English, providing selections from Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, as well as Rein ach, Stein, Gadamer, Arendt, de Beauvoir, Levinas, Derrida and Ricoeur. Many of the primary texts in phenomenology (especially those of Husserl) are, when in print, incredibly expensive, and others by some of the less widely read figures can be hard to find, especially in translation. Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 3rd enlarged edn (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1982) is a work that covers the entirety of the phenomenological movement, including its origins in nineteenth-century philosophy and psychology.
Rudolf Bernet, Iso Kern & Eduard Marbach, An Introduction to Husserlian Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995) provides a comprehensive introduction to Husserl's philosophy, ranging from his views on mathematics and logic to his conception of the "lifeworld", developed in some of his final works. The second chapter, on the phenomenological and eidetic reductions, is especially helpful, as the authors document the several different motivations for the performance of the reduction. Hubert Dreyfus & Harrison Hall (eds), Husserl, Intentionality, and Cognitive Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984) contains a number of essays that are useful in terms of explicating and evaluating Husserl's phenomenology, with an emphasis on his relevance to contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind. The pair of papers by Dagfinn Follesdal ("Husserl's Notion of Noema" and "Husserl's Theory of Perception") provides short, clear discussions of some of Husserl's main ideas.
Emmanuel Levinas, Discovering Existence with Husserl, R. Cohen & M. Smith (trans.) (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998) is a collection of Levinas's essays on Husserl, ranging from 1929 to 1977. Given their span, the essays allow one to observe Levinas s transition from student of phenomenology to sympathetic critic. His The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology, 2nd edn, A. Orianne (trans.) (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1995) is a study of Husserl's phenomenology, written by Levinas very early in his philosophical career (in 1930, at the age of 24) shortly after studying with Husserl in Freiburg.
Jan Patočka, An Introduction to Husserl's Phenomenology (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1995) is a helpful introduction, covering a number of central topics, including Husserl's early, formative ideas on logic and arithmetic, the reduction, time consciousness, and embodiment. Patočka, a Czech philosopher, was one of Husserl's later students. Paul Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1967) is a collection of essays on Husserl's phenomenology by one of the great French phenomenological philosophers. The commentaries on Cartesian Meditations are especially good for reading alongside the original work. A collection of essays by contemporary philosophers and scholars in Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Husserl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) covers many of the central topics in Husserl's phenomenology.
Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division I (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991) is a comprehensive commentary on Division I by one of the leading American Heidegger scholars, with an emphasis on Heidegger's relevance to contemporary philosophy of mind and epistemology, as well as current debates about the viability of artificial intelligence. The book also contains an Appendix (co-written with Jane Rubin) on Division II. Most of the essays in the collection edited by Hubert Dreyfus and Harrison Hall (eds), Heidegger: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) concentrate on Heidegger's early philosophy, and so will be helpful for working through Being and Time. Hubert Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall (eds), A Companion to Heidegger (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004) is a collection of thirty-one essays, organized topically, with nine essays devoted specifically to topics in Being and Time, and their Heidegger Reexamined (London: Routledge, 2002) is a four-volume set that gathers together many of the most important essays in English on Heidegger's philosophy.
Charles Guignon (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) contains a number of helpful essays on Heidegger's early philosophy (and several on his later thought as well). Theodore Kisiel & John van Buren (eds), Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1994) considers Heidegger's philosophical development, with particular emphasis on the influences upon his thinking. Accordingly, several essays are devoted to Heidegger's relation to Husserl. Stephen Mulhall, Routledge Ph ilosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time (London: Routledge, 1996) is a very readable commentary on Being and Time, covering most of the key ideas of both Division I and Division II. Mark A. Wrath all & Jeff Malpas (eds), Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Volume 1 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000) contains a number of important essays on Heidegger and Being and Time, and their Heidegger, Coping, and Cognitive Science: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Volume 2 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000) concentrates on "applied" Heidegger, that is, the idea of using Heidegger's philosophy to address philosophical problems in such areas as the philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and ethics.
Christina Howells (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Sartre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) contains a number of helpful essays on Sartre's philosophy, although not all concern his phenomenology. The Conclusion, subtitled "Sartre and the Deconstruction of the Subject", is especially good in documenting the significance of Sartre's early insights concerning the structure of subjectivity. Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1981) contains a number of essays on Sartre's philosophy, including ones by Paul Ricoeur, Hubert Dreyfus, Dagfinn Follesdal and Hazel Barnes. As a volume in the Library of Living Philosophers series, the book also contains an extended interview with Sartre concerning his philosophical development, as well as replies by Sartre to the essays.
Taylor Carman, "The Body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty", Philosophical Topics 27(2) (Fall 1999), 205-26 is an account of Husserl and Merleau-Pontys respective conceptions of embodiment that emphasizes their differences. Carman argues that Merleau-Ponty's conception represents a distinctive improvement over Husserl's prior account. Taylor Carman & Mark B. N. Hansen (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) is a very recent collection of essays, including a number that provide helpful accounts of Merleau-Ponty's conceptions of perception, embodiment and motor intentionality, as well as illustrations of his continued relevance to contemporary philosophy and cognitive science. Hubert Dreyfus & Stuart E. Dreyfus, "The Challenge of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Embodiment for Cognitive Science", in Perspectives on Embodiment, G. Weiss & H. Haber (eds), 103-120 (London: Routledge, 1999) provides a detailed account of Merleau-Ponty's conception of motor intentionality and the intentional arc, as seen through the lens of the authors' longstanding interest in skills and skill acquisition. Sean D. Kelly, "What Do We See (When We Do)?", Philosophical Topics 27(2) (Fall 1999), 107-28 rehearses and extends a number of Merleau-Ponty's principal objections to empiricist and intellectualist (or cognitivist) accounts of visual experience.
Simon Critchley & Robert Bernasconi (eds), Cambridge Companion to Levinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) is a recent collection of essays on a wide range of issues in Levinas's philosophy. Most relevant perhaps to our discussion is R. Bernet's essay, "Levinas's Critique of Husserl".
J. Claude Evans, Strategies of Deconstruction: Derrida and the Myth of the Voice (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1991) is in large part a meticulous reconstruction of Derridas arguments against Husserl in Speech and Phenomena, along with a vigorous defence of Husserl against them.
David R. Cerbone, Phenomenology: Straight and Hetero in A House Divided: Comparing Analytic and Continental Philosophy, C. G. Prado (ed.), 105-38 (Amherst, MA: Humanity Books, 2003) is a more extensive examination than found in Chapter 5 of Dennetts conception of heterophenomenology, his critique of the phenomenological tradition, and the effectiveness of these criticisms in light of Husserl's own response to scepticism about phenomenology. John McDowell, "The Content of Perceptual Experience", in his Mind, Value, and Reality, 341-58 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998) is an excellent critique of Dennett's account (among others) of perceptual experience that diagnoses his "off-key phenomenology" and emphasizes the importance of the distinction between the personal and the sub-personal in descriptions of perceptual experience.