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.
Horace Smith has written many poems and novels. He was born in London on December 31, 1779. He had 7 siblings and was the 5th child. He went to Chigwell School, where he gained his education. In 1812, he and his brother, James, published their...
Thomas Paine's Common Sense (released in January 1776) is no doubt one of the most important books ever written in American History. Initially, Paine published the book anonymously. However, after three months in publication Paine was revealed as...
The ancients called the dramatic poet Sophocles a pupil and rival of Aeschylus. In 468, the twenty-eight-year-old Sophocles first won dramatic competition against Aeschylus and has reigned on stage for 60 years without knowing a single defeat. In...
Of all the poets of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, few were more important than Charlotte Mew. Her life was one of tremendous darkness and profound tragedy. When she was a small child, three of her brothers died. Later in her life,...
Prior to writing and directing 2008's In Bruges, Martin McDonagh was an accomplished playwright and short film maker, responsible for plays like The Pillowman and short films like the Oscar-winning Six Shooter (2004). The film is set and was...
The title of China Mieville's Un Lun Dun (published in January 2007) came from the name "UnLondon," which is the realm in which the book takes place. As the title suggests, the book is set in London in a different realm and follows two 12-year-old...
Gaudy Night is a 1935 mystery novel by English author Dorothy L. Sayers and the tenth installment in Sayers' series of works featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. It draws heavily from Sayers' experience of academic and social life at the Somerville...
Directed by Mel Gibson, Braveheart (released in 1995) is a war/drama about William Wallace, a Scottish patriot. When the war started between the Scottish and English people, Wallace immediately jumped into battle. When the love of his life was...
Robert Penn Warren (born in 1905 in Kentucky, USA, died in 1989) was an American writer and literary critic. Warren studied and later taught literature both at Yale University in the United States as well as at Oxford University in the UK.
In...
Born in 1854, Oscar Wilde was a prolific writer whose famous work includes novels like The Picture of Dorian Gray (originally published in 1890) and a play called The Importance of Being Earnest (which premiered in 1895). However, Wilde was also a...
Quicksands was published in 1884 and immediately translated into multiple languages including English. It found an eager audience on both sides of the Atlantic. The United States, having just survived the Civil War and Reconstruction, was in the...
Crazy Brave is a memoir written by the Native American poet Joy Harjo. The book spans over 176 pages and was published in July 2012 by W. W. Norton Company, before being republished a year later by the same publisher. In 2014, it was made into an...
Traditionally, candidates for the Office of the President of the United States write a book telling the public a little bit about themselves and their history (most are technically memoirs after all). Primarily, though, these books are meant to...
Traditionally, candidates for the Office of the President of the United States write a book telling the public a little bit about themselves and their history (most are technically memoirs after all). Primarily, though, these books are meant to...
This Fight Is Our Fight is a 2017 book by American Democratic politician Elizabeth Warren which delves into the ongoing assault against the American middle class. The book itself serves not only as a rebuttal against Trump’s election but also as a...
Book Seven of the Tales of the City series is important because it reintroduced Armistead Maupin's iconic series to an entirely new generation of readers. Published eighteen years after Book Six, it San Francisco of the early twenty first century...
Armistead Maupin wrote the nine novels within the Tales of the City series over a thirty-six years. The first four books were serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle before they were published, but the remaining five were published as novels...
Movies about the Gulf War are usually centered around long drawn out gunfire battles, losses taken by American troops, and nail-biting strategic battles in an effort to quell a dangerous enemy. Three Kings, directed by David O. Russell, presents a...
If the Academy Awards ever added a category for Most Tears Shed In A Movie, Love Story would definitely be a contender, if not the winner outright. Considered to be one of the most romantic movies of all time, the film is at its heart a tragedy...
The Black Death: A Personal History is a book written by author and scholar John Hatcher. It was first published June 2008 by Da Capo Press in the United States, as well as being published as The Black Death: An Intimate History by Orion in the UK...
There is a certain air of mystery around the authorship of this epic poem; scholars are torn between attributing its writing to Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Mallory. It is one of many versions of the popular fifteenth century loathly lady story, in...
Deepa Mehta's Earth (released in September 1999), is set in 1947 during the partition of India. It is a romance film and tells the story of a young girl with Polio named Lenny. Lenny is from a wealthy Parsi family who wants to remain neutral in...
The Slave Ship: A Human History is a book written by American author, scholar, professor and historian Marcus Rediker. It was first published in October 2007 by Penguin Books in the United States, and December 2007 by Viking books in the United...
I Capture the Castle is author Dodie Smith's first novel. Published shortly after World War II in 1948 (the book was written while Smith and her husband were in California during the war), I Capture the Castle follows a young 17-year-old girl...