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History of the Collection

There have been several collections of poetry since the sixteenth century that have included works attributed to Sir Thomas Wyatt. There remains confusion, however, as to the exact number of poems written by Wyatt; there...

The Wave was Todd Strasser's third novel, written while he spent days working as the owner of a fortune cookie manufacturer. It is based on a real-life experiment performed by high-school teacher Ron Jones in 1967 (for more information, see "The...

Alan Paton wrote Cry, the Beloved Country during his tenure as the principal at the Diepkloof Reformatory for delinquent African boys. He started writing the novel in Trondheim, Norway in September of 1946 and finished it in San Francisco on...

Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes was first performed in 467 BCE, as the third play of the trilogy satyr-drama "Sphinx." Unfortunately, we only possess this play from the trilogy, and we do not possess more than one play from any of Aeschylus' other...

According to New York Times book reviewer William Boyd, "The great benefit of Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone, is that it may help us arrive at an understanding of this situation. Beah's autobiography is almost unique, as far as I can...

After twenty-five previous novels over the span of three decades, Joyce Carol Oates accomplished something with We were the Mulvaneys in 1996 that she’d never done before: she hit the number-one spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Although...

Writer and essayist Jonathan Franzen came to fame with his third novel The Corrections, published in 2001. The Corrections has been heralded as a timely and astute prediction of the frantic, cynical and anxious mood that would dominate American...

East, West (1994) is an anthologized work, one of the most distinctive works to have been written by Salman Rushdie. The anthology consists of a myriad of short stories and is divided into three sections - “east”, “west”, and “east, west”. The...

The nature of Dylan Thomas lies in the tragic characteristics of the drama extending to his life. It is plagued by tales of alcoholism, jealousy, and penury. Yet, despite engaging in excessive self-indulgence, Thomas launched himself into writing...

The Laramie project is a play written by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project and first staged in 2000 at the Ricketson Theatre in Denver Laramie.

The play is set in Laramie and was inspired by the real case of an American...

Ten Little Indians is a 2004 collection of short stories by Sherman Alexie. The collection is composed of nine short stories that tell of the struggles of the Spokane tribe, a Native American tribe that lives in Washington state. Though there are...

Western philosophy in the 18th century was characterized by the emergence of oppositional thought to ancient notions of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. Immanuel Kant occupies a central role in the generation of several radical new...

Since its publication in 1781, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason has established itself as one of the essential volumes in the history of philosophical literature. The complex work stands on its own as the equal of such other foundational...

Kurt Vonnegut, the author of Galapagos, was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and then attended Cornell University. However, he dropped out at the beginning of 1943 and joined the US Army.

Published in 1985, Galapagos is a novel that describes life...

King Leopold’s Ghost was written by Adam Hochschild and was first published in the fall of 1998. After being refused by nine different publishing houses, the tenth house accepted it and the novel became an international bestseller and won the Mark...

The House of the Scorpion was written by Nancy Farmer and published in 2002 by Atheneum Books. It is the first of two books in the series, and is a combination of the science fiction and YA genres. It is set in the future and largely takes place...

As is the case with Marie de France herself, very little is known about her collection of lays, including for whom or why they were written, and whether they were even intended to be presented as a unified collection. The date of composition has...

War and Peace was published as a serialized novel, completed in 1869. Famous for its girth and sprawling ambition, it merges historical fact with invented characters, and philosophy with fiction. For all these reasons, it initially baffled many...

George Bernard Shaw was moved to write his The Doctor’s Dilemma in order explore fully the paradox of how a man can be a genius but still lack honor. It is this tragic circumstance of the individual that moved to Shaw to view the play as a comedy...

Young Goodman Brown and Other Short Stories consists of tales that were all published in newspapers and periodicals before they were later compiled and published in short story collections during Hawthorne's lifetime. These works were written...

A Single Shard was published in 2001 and was written by Linda Sue Park. It is a novel that is set in ancient Korea, and that tells the story of a young boy named Tree-ear, who is an orphan. He sees a potter and wants to learn how to make pottery,...

Rules, written by Cynthia Lord, was published in 2006.

This book is about Catherine, a 12-year-old girl, who has a little brother named David. She tries to pretend that she is a normal girl with a normal life, but her life is not normal because...

Robert Leslie Conley was enjoying a career as a senior editor in the employ of National Geographic Magazine. And this was back when that magazine held a reputation beyond repute; back before it was in the hands of anti-science magnate, Rupert...

Bridge to Terabithia, written by Katherine Paterson, was published in 1977. The narrative focuses on Jesse Aarons, a boy who lives on a farm and who dreams of being the fastest runner in sixth grade. When he gets back to school, Leslie Burke, who...