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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...

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...

"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...

Clay’s Ark is the last of five novels which comprise Octavia Butler’s Patternmaster series of science fiction tales. The series that commence in 1976 was brought to a close with a book which gestated and was born during a very difficult period for...

Call it Sleep is a fictitious novel written by Henry Roth and follows the life of a young Jewish boy who lives in the Lower East Side of New York. The book was published in 1934 by Robert O. Ballou's publishing company.

The story follows David...

Childhood and Society, written by Psychologist Erik Erikson entails what is considered to be one of the most important studies in child psychology. In this book, Erikson studied the social factors and experiences that shape the child’s...

It is entirely within the realm of possibility that without Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, the world would never have gotten to read Gayl Jones’ novel Corregidora. At least, not exactly in the same form that it takes as a result of a world in which...

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...

Continental Drift is the fourth novel from Russell Banks and marks the turning point of his career. The novel earned Banks the John Dos Passos Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award as well as being a finalist for the Pulitzer...

The publication of Lorrie Moore’s third collection of short stories catapulted her to the front ranks of major writers of short fiction. What her previous collection Like Life promised, the arrival in 1998 of Birds of America confirmed. Though she...

Crow, a book of poetry by Ted Hughes, was published in 1970 by the esteemed British publisher Faber and Faber. It is widely considered one of Hughes' most important works. Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow marks the second phase of Hughes'...

Margery Kempe is a historic figure who lived in England between 1373 and 1438 and remained in history because of her writings and her religious beliefs. While Kempe was never formally made a saint by the Catholic Church she is named a Christian...

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...

In the 1890s, a family immigrated into America from Poland. Anzia Yezierska recalls the stress and strife of living her with relatives among other Jewish immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side in Bread Givers. Published in 1925, the book...

Published in 1901, Buddenbrooks was 26-year-old Thomas Mann’s first novel and the work that set his career on a relentlessly inevitable path toward winning the Nobel Prize twenty-eight years later. The story covers four generations of the titular...

Blues for Mister Charlie was written by James Baldwin for an express purpose. That purpose was education: the education of white America on the subject of the black experience in America. The epicenter of that black experience was Emmitt Till, a...

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...

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...

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...

The occupants of a British manor house usually become the focus of a novel due to whatever particular machinations are at work to drive the narrative. Those machinations usually range from throwing suspicion of a murder onto one another in order...

Big Sur was written by Jack Kerouac in 1962. The book was published five years after his novel On the Road put him and the Beat Generation in the national spotlight.

The “Beat” in Beat Generation was defined by Kerouac himself as having several...

Amerika is the first novel written by Franz Kafka, but remained incomplete until Kafka's death and was only published posthumously. The German book was released three years after Kafka's death in 1927 although the first English translation was not...

Here’s a timed quiz for you: name a memorable African-American female character living in the post-Civil War era from American Literature published before the Civil Rights Movement that wasn’t either a mammy, a prostitute or an ill-fated jazz...

Anticlaudianus was written by French theologian and poet Alain de Lille. This lengthy, symbolic poem is about creation as well as the edification of the human soul by God, nature, theology, and philosophy. Alain is also well-known for another poem...