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For the mythological background on Prometheus, refer to the Short Summary section of this ClassicNote. The information in the Context section focuses on the historical background of Aeschylus' times and crucial information on his art form.

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Sense and Sensibility was Austen's first published novel; its first edition came out in three volumes in 1811, and the novel was reasonably well-liked and successful. This was much to the relief of Austen, who financed the printing of the book...

The adventures of Crusoe on his island, the main part of Defoe's novel, are based largely on the central incident in the life of an undisciplined Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk. Although it is possible, even likely that Defoe met Selkirk before he...

Published in 1859, On Liberty was perhaps John Stuart Mill's finest and most controversial work. Released shortly after his beloved wife, Harriet's death, On Liberty is Mill at his finest arguing for the principles he had espoused over his fifty...

Native Son's publication history is one of its most revelatory aspects. After several novel-projects had failed, Wright sold Native Son to Harper Publishers, netting a $400 advance. Published in 1940, Native Son became a selection of the...

Moll Flanders, published in 1722, was one of the earliest English novels (the earliest is probably Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, published in 1688). Like many early novels, it is told in the first person as a narrative, and is presented as a truthful...

Middlemarch was first published in 1871 and 1872, as a serial novel in eight parts, which came out every two months. This was Eliot's most comprehensive and sweeping novel to date, and was intended as a study of provincial British life. Eliot...

In June of 1883, Thomas Hardy and his wife Emma settled into their new home in Dorchester. The Hardys had spent the last few years traveling about England, although they wanted to settle down and perhaps begin a family. Finally, Hardy and Emma...

The Two Towers is the second novel of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Tolkien began this trilogy well after the "world" of Middle Earth had been created. Several of the characters presented in this novel were first presented in The Hobbit. The...

The Libation Bearers is the second part of Aeschylus' great trilogy, the Oresteia. It has been said that Athens left the world two masterpieces of surpassing beauty: the Parthenon and the Oresteia. Aeschylus was the great father of drama in the...

Jazz was first published in 1992, a year before Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Chronologically, Jazz is Morrison's sixth novel of seven, followed by Paradise and preceded by The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby...

Kafka wrote the short story "A Hunger Artist" in 1922. He combined it with three other stories for the collection A Hunger Artist, which was published soon after his death in 1924.

All four stories in some way detail the negotiations of artists...

Consisting of 15,693 lines of verse, the Iliad has been hailed as the greatest epic of Western civilization. Although we know little about the time period when it was composed and still less about the epic's composer, the Iliad's influence on...

Hard Times was originally published in serial form, in a magazine called Household Words beginning on April 1, 1854. The last time that Dickens had published a work in serial form was in 1841 and when publication of Hard Times had begun, Dickens...

Franny and Zooey is a major piece of J.D. Salinger's Glass family saga. After his 1951 classic, The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger devoted his time to writing about this family of mystical prodigies in several stories from Nine Stories (1953) and...

The Eumenides is the third part of Aeschylus' great trilogy, the Oresteia. It has been said that Athens left the world two masterpieces of surpassing beauty: the Parthenon and the Oresteia. Aeschylus was the great father of drama in the West, and...

Endgame was written by Beckett in 1957 and translated in English in 1958. There are several differences between the French original and the English translation, notably the title and the scene where Clov spots the young boy. The play falls into...

World War I began in 1914 and ended on Nov. 11, 1918. Fought primarily between the Triple Alliance powers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Triple Entente countries of England, France, Russia, Italy, and the U.S. (Italy defected...

Cervantes is considered one of the greatest writers of all time. Often, Cervantes is compared to Shakespeare. Both men have become "national literary treasures" glowing during "golden ages" of literature. Cervantes was writing along aside a number...

Anne's diary was written during the years 1942-1944. These years were the toughest times of World War II in Europe. To make sense of World War II, one must begin with the aftermath of World War I and the Versailles Treaty of 1919.

At the beginning...

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact motive Dumas had in mind when he wrote The Count of Monte Cristo. He wrote the novel in 1844 and it was published in 18 fragments between the years 1844-46. This was at the same time that Dumas embarked on his...

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was the last of Twain's novels written during the apex of his career. As a work it shows his more mature writing, hinting at some of the cynical and dark themes that he would obsess over in his final...

In 1846 Karl Marx was exiled from Paris on account of his radical politics. He moved to Belgium where he attempted to assemble a ragtag group of exiled German artisans into an unified political organization, the German Working Men's Association....