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.
The Death of Woman Wang is a book written by Jonathan Spence and published in 1979. It takes place in 17th century Northern China, in the province of T’an-ch’eng. The book was well-received by critics.
Spence's described events take place in a...
The Romance of the Shop is a novel penned in 1888 by Amy Levy. It is one of the first novels that illuminates the struggles of the New Women, one of the first Feminist movements that gained traction in the United States. The novel's protagonists...
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is an educational philosophical book written by Paulo Freire and translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. The book was first published in 1968 and was translated to English two years later. Paulo Freire is a Brazilian...
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia was declared in 2015 to be one of the top ten eating disorder books of all time. This memoir was beaten to the number one spot only by Clare Beeken's 2001 account of her journey from anorexia to compulsive...
Published in 1984, The Barracks Thief is a war novel written by the American author Tobias Wolff. Published shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, the novel takes place in the decade before its publication. Following not the story of one, but...
The Band's Visit is a stage musical written by David Yazbek, based on a book by Itamar Moses. The book was itself based on the Israeli film The Band's Visit. The musical first opened off Broadway before opening at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in...
Ray Russell is an American author born on September 4, 1924 in Chicago, Illinois. Despite Russell’s massive success in the literary world, he did not always work as a writer. After graduating high school, he served in the Air Force and...
God Help The Child is American author Toni Morrison's eleventh novel. It was published in 2015, Before this book's publication, in April, the literary world was given a small taster of the literary feast that was to come, when The New Yorker...
John Milton was an English writer born on December 9, 1608. As a child and young adult, Milton was an avid reader and traveled often, which played a great role in shaping his beliefs and political ideologies. He is known for capitalizing on the...
Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away is a novel published in 2011 and written by British author and nurse Christine Watson. The book follows a typical marriage-problem plot, when Ezikiel and Blessing have a father that is cheating on their mother. With much...
All too often, novellas about haunting, spooky old houses and things that go bump in the night are reduced to the level of pulp fiction, despite their promising storyline and potential for suspense. However, in Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque, we...
Born in the state of Massachusetts in 1874, Amy Lowell is an important figure in the annals of American poetry. Being the youngest of five children, Lowell and her siblings were born into a well-off family. In fact, in New England, the name Lowell...
Published in 2012, Dolly is a novel by the British author Susan Hill. The novel follows the path of a common horror plot - that of a doll that is recognized for more than it is. Most of Hill's books are horror and suspense stories like this one,...
Tim Turnbull is a poet from the north of England. He was born in Yorkshire in 1960 and started writing poetry in the early Nineties after being employed in forestry. His poems are almost all intended to be performed rather than read to oneself in...
We Are All Made of Molecules is a fiction novel for teen readers by Canadian author and screenwriter Susin Nielsen. It tells the story of a thirteen-year-old boy called Stewart, who is a child prodigy with no social skills, and Ashley, the most...
Francois Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 was is the first adaption of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel of the same name, released to critical acclaim. Truffaut, surprisingly didn't care for science fiction, but after a friend showed him Bradbury's...
Imagine being so passionate about dinosaurs that you want to bring them back to life, study them and share your obsession with the rest of the world. Jurassic Park, the 1993 science-fiction and adventure movie directed by Steven Spielberg, shows...
After series creator George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney in October 2012, Disney fast-tracked a new Skywalker trilogy and stand-alone films for release starting in 2015. Disney wished for the first film produced under its banner to be a trilogy...
“To His Mistress Going to Bed” is one of Donne’s elegies written published after his death as a part of his collection of metaphysical poetry. The term “elegy” is used to refer to a poem which is written to mourn the dead or the death itself....
“Holy Sonnets: At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow” is one of the poems from the collection of poems that are concerned with themes of religion, mortality, self-awareness, and the need for closeness with the divine. It is a one-stanza...
The poem "A Valediction: Of Weeping" was published two years after the poet’s death, and it was believed to be written as a dedication to his wife Anne. Some argue that the poem’s ambiguity and metaphysical contemplation speak against the claim...
Extinction was published in 1986 and was the last novel published by Thomas Bernhard before his death in 1989.
Bernhard was born out of wedlock in the Netherlands in 1931. He was left to live with his grandparents for six years until his mother,...
A comedic 1991 play by Paul Rudnick, I Hate Hamlet tells the tale of an actor who wrestles with taking on the role of Hamlet, while attempting to deal with life's problems as well. It premiered on Broadway later in 1991, and enjoyed moderate...
Douglas Dunn was born in Scotland in 1942. Graduating with an English degree from Hull University in 1969. Dunn has since received three honorary doctorates, two Literature doctorates from the University of Hull and the University of St Andrews,...