Newest Study Guides
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.
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.
Doctor Zhivago has one of the strangest stories of publication in modern fiction. Written by Russian author Boris Pasternak, the book was initially published in Italy in 1957 and would not become available inside the Soviet Union for years....
Despair is Vladimir Nabokov's novel in Russian, first published in the Paris émigré journal "Contemporary notes" in 1934. In 1936, it was published as a book in the publishing house "Petropolis" in Berlin.
Despair is the sixth Russian novel...
The Fixer is a book written by Bernard Malamud in 1966. The book revolves mainly around the character of Bok, who is a Jewish handyman living in Russia. A Christian boy is murdered and Bok is blamed for the murder - accused of murdering the boy as...
Many critics argue that Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 film adaption of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V” is one of the greatest cinematic recreations of Shakespearean literature ever. The film, which was shot primarily on intricate theatrical sets with a...
Meena Alexander's Fault Lines was first published in 1993 and expanded in 2003. It is a memoir that, like many of Alexander's other works, focuses primarily on "trauma, migration, and memory," as well as trauma's "impact on subjectivity, and the...
The genesis of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame can be traced back to a single word. That word was “fate” written in Greek and carved into a wall on one the Notre Dame cathedral towers. From that chance discovery did the author...
Spawning a highly successful movie adaption, Eight Men Out is a sports novel written by Eliot Asinof and published in 1963. It is his most popular work.
Eight Men Out centers around the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, when eight members of the Chicago...
The History of Rome (also known as the Compendium of Roman History) was written by Velleius Paterculus, a soldier and historian. It was published during 1924 by Harvard University Press. This written work is a summary of Rome's history between the...
The Enigma of Arrival is a 1987 semi-autobiographical novel by V. S. Naipaul. The story tells of a young man from Trinidad who makes his way to England, and the novel thus encompasses themes related to the post-colonialism and imperialistic impact...
Fall on Your Knees is a novel written by Ann-Marie MacDonald and was first published in 1996 in Canada but then republished on October 2002 by Pocket books.
The novel follows the life of the Piper Family throughout the 19th and 20th century. The...
The title characters the film Eight Men Out are those eight ballplayers for the 1919 Chicago White Sox who were banned from baseball for allegedly throwing the World Series. When you hear the story of the team that came to be referred to as the...
Deliverance is a 1972 dramatic thriller movie produced and directed by John Boorman. It stars are Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds. The movie is based on the book of the same name by James Dickey and the author had a small role in the film as the...
The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche diverge significantly from the collected works of most other philosophers. Although certain concepts and theories recur with frequently and ideas are repeated often enough to become motifs, Nietzsche’s writings...
Bury Fair is a 1689 play by Thomas Shadwell. In keeping with his standard application already established with twelve productions produced over the proceeding twenty years, Bury Fair (sometimes spelled Bury-Fair) was an adaptation of an already...
Birthday Letters is Ted Hughes' final collection of poetry. It was published in 1998, months prior to Hughes' death. It contains eighty eight poems and is viewed as the poet's most successful and revered work. It is 208 pages long.
Birthday...
John Gower’s Confession Amantis exists in at least three separate and distinct versions. The very first edition published in 1390 is generally regarded as the definitive edition for scholarly and academic attention. That edition comprises more...
The Crying Game is a controversial 1991 thriller directed by Neil Jordan, which went from art house cult favorite to worldwide sensation on the basis of the film’s most shocking revelation. The Crying Game took advantage of viral marketing before...
If when reading Edith Wharton’s 1913 novel The Custom of the Country one is overtaken by a strange sense of déjà vu, rest assured nothing supernatural is going on. All that strangely familiar feeling of having read a novel you know for sure you...
Daniel Deronda is an English novel written by Mary Ann Evans under the pen name George Eliot and published in 1876. It is the last novel written by George Eliot through which George Eliot continues to analyze the Victorian society in which she...
Rarely performed for modern audiences, Richard Steele’s 1722 comedy The Conscious Lovers nevertheless is an essential component in a major turning in the history of the British stage. The play’s debut took place on the night of November 7, 1722 on...
The version of the Christian Holy Bible commonly referred to as the King James Version goes by the more technically correct name of the “Authorized Version.” The creation of the Authorized Version of the Holy Bible can be directly traced back to...
"Clarissa, or The history of a young lady" is a novel written by Samuel Richardson in 4 parts in 1748. It was created in the genre of a family character-studying novel in the era of the Enlightenment Mature. This genre was at that time very common...
Daphnis and Chloe is one of the few surviving examples of one of the most unusual genres of ancient literature: the Greek romance. The author is known only as Longus and is believed to have lived on the isle of Lesbos between the 2nd and 3rd...
Cloud 9 is a two-act play written in 1979 by Caryl Churchill, who is widely accepted as one of England's foremost modern playwrights. It is a controversial play that deals with sexual politics and has some female characters played by men to...