Newest Study Guides

William Faulkner was an American novelist born on September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi. As a child, he was influenced by his mother to become an avid reader and writer. She introduced him to classic novels at an early age and instilled in...

The Political Writings of John Locke is a collection of a few of Locke’s most important works that was edited by David Wootton, a professor of history and expert on English speaking countries, and others, such as France and Italy. The Political...

T’was a plague that gave birth to William Shakespeare’s long narrative poem “The Rape of Lucrece.” Between June 1592 and May 1594, acting companies were banished from London and the theater essentially became non-existent. The reason for this was...

Horatio Alger was an American writer and an author of more than one hundred books, most of which were written for young readers. His best known work is called Ragged Dick and was published in 1867. The plot of this book follows a formula made so...

Revelations of Divine Love belongs to the same genre of texts based entirely upon mysterious visions imparted through what is believed to be a divine goodness. In this case, the year was 1373 and a woman who has become known as Julian of Norwich...

In 1917 Edith Wharton moved out of her fictional comfort zone of life among the New York City elite and took her profound imagination to New England in the novel Summer. Over the course of four months in North Dormer, Massachusetts, a teenage girl...

Selections from the Essays of Montaigne is a collection of essays written by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne was a French writer, philosopher, and statesman in the 1500s. Since he lived at the end of the century, he lived and wrote in the...

Having played the part of the Shakespeare's caring magician or cruel tyrant, depending on how you view Prospero, in four stage productions in his career, John Gielgud's self-professed life ambition was to create a film adaptation of what we...

It was while visiting Europe in in 1874 that Henry James begin writing Roderick Hudson. Even before the manuscript was completed, the Atlantic Monthly began serializing chapters upon the author’s return to American in 1875. With the highly popular...

The Street was written by Ann Petry, an African American author. The novel was published in 1946 and is set during World War II in New York City, specifically Harlem. The protagonist is named Lutie Johnson, who is the single African American...

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is a novel written by Yukio Mishima, published in Japanese in 1963.

Yukio Mishima is a representative of the Japanese literature, an absolute world classic and writer, descending into the abyss of hell...

The Selected Tales of Henry James represent a concerted effort to provide a cross section of the wealth of talent that was the short fiction of Henry James. Speaking of size, there is a good reason why the narratives in this collection are termed...

The Return of the Soldier is a novel written by Rebecca West in 1918. The novel revolves around the story of Chris Baldry, an upper class gentleman who has returned from the war to his wife Kitty Baldry. Kitty Baldry is a perfect representation of...

Swann’s Way is the first volume of Marcel Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time, which has seven volumes within it. The entire work was first published in French between 1913 and 1927; it was translated into English and published between 1922 and...

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui is a play that was published in 1941. It is subtitled “A parable play” and is a satirical allegory of Hitler and the Nazis rise to power before World War Two. This play was written by Bertolt Brecht, a German...

Though Hardy is known more for his novels and poetry, the short fiction canon of Thomas Hardy nearly reaches the half-century mark. The overwhelming bulk are those available in just four collections published between 1888 and 1913: Wessex Tales, A...

Mark Twain asserted that his literary hybrid Roughing It was nothing more than a simple personal narrative, absent any intent to present that account as history or philosophy. Well, Mark Twain said a lot of things, some of them not to be trusted....

The only work written by the ancient Roman historian Livy was a multi-volume history of Rome that modern scholars consider to be long as literary value, but rather wanting in historical fact. At one time the full history written by Livy spanned...

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is a collection of sequential short stories that was published first in 1912. They were written by Stephen Leacock, a Canadian political scientist and writer, who was one of the most famous humorists in the world...

Robert Lowell was born into a reputable family on March 1, 1917 in Boston, Massachusetts. His ancestors included famous poets, politicians, and military personnel. He was education at prestigious academies in Boston, where he became interested in...

GE Moore is an English philosopher born on November 4, 1873 in Upper Norwood, London. Moore grew up in a family of academics - some were poets, other were professors, and all were dedicated to the arts and humanities. He received his primary...

The Romance of the Rose is an allegorical romance composed in two parts by two different writers over the course of half a century (more or less) during the 13th century. Gillaume de Lorris contributed the opening 4,000 lines (more or less) around...

First published in 1757, Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful was a treatise on aesthetics that had a tangible impact on the Romantic and Gothic movements. Burke, through this work, was...

The Short Tales of Joseph Conrad is a collection of eight examples of shorter fiction by the esteemed writer of Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness. Conrad was born in Poland and moved to England, where he became a naturalized citizen. Much of his life...