Each study guide includes essays, an in-depth chapter-by-chapter summary and analysis, character list, theme list, historical context, author biography and quiz. Study guides are available in PDF format.
Henry V was probably the greatest military leader that England ever had. He laid claim to the French throne in 1414 by invoking an English royal claim, and managed to win the Battle of Agincourt the following year against seemingly impossible...
“To an Athlete Dying Young” is one of the most famous poems by the English poet A. E. Housman. Houseman wrote at the tail end of the nineteenth century. He wrote poetry as a hobby, and his primary occupation was as a scholar of the classics, with...
Camara Laye's The Dark Child is a 1953 French-language memoir about the author's childhood in Guinea. The son of a protective mother and a mystical-minded blacksmith and goldsmith father, Laye writes with affection about Malinke-Muslim traditions...
“To Penshurst” is a country-house poem by Ben Jonson addressed to Robert Sidney, Jonson’s patron. During the early modern period, many poets and artists were supported by a patron, who paid them in exchange for custom works addressed to that...
The Tempest first appeared in print as the first play in Shakespeare's 1623 Folio. It has been variously regarded as a highlight of Shakespeare's dramatic output, as a representation of the essence of human life, and as containing Shakespeare's...
"Leaf by Niggle" is a short fictional work, alternately called a short story and a novella, by acclaimed fantasy writer and Christian essayist J.R.R. Tolkien. The story was first published in the Dublin Review in January 1945, despite being...
"The Death of a Government Clerk" is a short story by Anton Chekhov. It was first published in "Fragments" in 1883 with the subtitle "The Incident." It was later included in the collection "Motley Stories" in 1886.
The story details an incident...
“Song: to Celia” is one of the most famous love poems in the English language. It was written by the English poet Ben Jonson, who is otherwise best known for writing witty plays with complex plots. Jonson was born in London in 1572 and died in...
Michael Lewis's The Blind Side is a nonfiction book about the life and early sports career of Michael Oher, as well as the evolution of the game of football.
The book interweaves two stories. It chronicles Michael's journey from an impoverished...
“On my First Son” is one of many epitaphs, or short poems commemorating a death, written by the English poet Ben Jonson. Jonson was born in London around 1572 and lived until 1637. In that time, he became one of England’s most famous playwrights,...
Ben Jonson's “On My First Daughter,” written after the death of his daughter in 1593, adapts the classical form of epitaph, or writing commemorating a dead person, to fit Jonson’s own situation. The decision to use such a generic style to remember...
The story of King Lear and his three daughters existed in some form up to four centuries before Shakespeare recorded his vision. Lear was a British King who reigned before the birth of Christ, allowing Shakespeare to place his play in a Pagan...
“The Windhover” is a sonnet written in 1887 and the best-known work of the English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins. Though unpublished in the author’s lifetime, it is now widely considered one of the crowning achievements of Victorian...
John Milton was an English poet and political thinker. Best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost, a retelling of the story of creation and Adam and Eve’s expulsion from paradise, he was also a political revolutionary. His life spanned an...
"The Leash" by Ada Limón is a free-verse poem discussing how to resist despair, through the scene of the speaker walking her dog. The poem consists of one long stanza of thirty-three lines, with no consistent form of rhyme or meter. Limón blends...
A Mercy is Nobel Prize-winning American writer Toni Morrison’s ninth novel, published in 2008. It is set in the late 17th century in colonial Virginia and explores the intersections of race, gender, and class in a lawless, raw new world.
When...
"Instructions on Not Giving Up" is a fourteen-line unrhymed poem about spring and resilience by 24th U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. Limón wrote the poem in one rush of inspiration, immediately after walking her dog through streets littered with...
For centuries, Titus Andronicus has carried the reputation of being the worst play by the best playwright. Though it was a great success when first staged in the late sixteenth century, in 1687 an English producer, Edward Ravenscroft, declared ...
Thomas Pynchon’s debut novel, V., first published in 1963, introduces many of the recurring themes—from historical relativism to technological menace to recurring characters like Pig Bodine and Lieutenant Weissman—that will appear throughout...
Geoffrey Chaucer is the English Middle Ages’ most famous writer. Best known for The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in a variety of voices, he was also the author of several other well-known long works, multiple translations, numerous...
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's most famous tragedy and one of the world's most enduring love stories, derives its plot from several sixteenth century sources. Shakespeare's primary inspiration for the play was Arthur Brooke's Tragical History of...
10 Things I Hate About You is a 1999 American teen romantic comedy film. It was directed by Gil Junger and produced by Andrew Lazar and Jeffrey Chernov of Mad Chance Productions and Touchstone Pictures, respectively. It was released on March 31,...
“Pied Beauty” was written by the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins in 1877, but—like so much of his work—wasn’t published until 1918, 30 years after his death, as a part of the collection Poems, which was edited by his close friend Robert...
John Clare was born in 1793, in the English village of Helpstone to Parker and Ann Stimson Clare. His father was a field laborer, and both of his parents were essentially illiterate. Clare received some schooling and learned basic reading and...
