Beauty
In her novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison writes, "Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.” In this thematic collection, we have gathered texts that explore the promises and problems of beauty.
The death of the young has been a thematic concern in literature since Antiquity. That untimely demise not only exposes human vulnerability but makes for melancholic contemplation over the waste of beauty, confidence, and youth’s energy. And when that person is an artist, still young and learning, the implications seem more tragic. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Adonais” (1821) is at one level a contemplation of the sudden death in 1821 of fellow poet John Keats. Keats... Read Adonais Summary
Antelope Woman is a novel by Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) author Louise Erdrich. First published in 1998 as The Antelope Wife, Erdrich revised and updated the text in 2012 and re-issued it, adding new content, storylines, and chapters. Like much of Erdrich’s other work, the novel is a multi-generational story of both Indigenous and white families set in and around traditional Ojibwe lands in North Dakota and Minnesota. Erdrich is known for her use of magical realism... Read Antelope Woman Summary
“A Prayer for my Daughter” by William Butler (W.B.) Yeats was originally published in his collection Michael Robartes and the Dancer in 1921. This book also includes one of Yeats’s most famous poems—“The Second Coming”—and was Yeats’s eighth collection of lyrical poems. “A Prayer for my daughter” was written in 1919, a year that marked the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. The war lasted until 1921 and heavily influenced Yeats. The poem’s location... Read A Prayer for My Daughter Summary
“Araby” is a short story by Irish writer James Joyce. The story is a part of Joyce’s renowned Dubliners collection, first published in 1914, which portrays daily life in the Irish city of Dublin in the early 20th century. In “Araby,” a young boy falls in love with his friend’s sister and attempts to purchase her a gift from the Araby Bazaar. The short story has been adapted as a song and a short film... Read Araby Summary
Sheldon Vanauken’s celebrated memoir A Severe Mercy is a moving portrait of deep love confronted with suffering and death. Published in 1977, A Severe Mercy was written by Vanauken from the compilation of many years’ worth of journal entries, hand-written letters, and firsthand accounts of the people and events that the narrative relates. As a Yale- and Oxford-trained scholar and professor of English and an accomplished poet and author, Vanauken brings his literary expertise to... Read A Severe Mercy Summary
A Single Shard (2001) is an award-winning, middle-grade historical novel by Korean American author Linda Sue Park. Park has written multiple children’s books, picture books, and volumes of poetry. Some of her better-known titles include A Long Walk to Water (2010), The Thirty-Nine Clues series in nine volumes (2010), and Prairie Lotus (2020). Much of her historical fiction is based on Korean history.A Single Shard is intended for readers in grades 5 to 7, though... Read A Single Shard Summary
“Aubade” is a contemporary love poem by American poet Major Jackson. Published in 2017 in Jackson’s fourth collection of poetry Roll Deep, the poem first appeared in The New Yorker in 2015. The title of the poem references a form of love song or poem that marks the dawn—the time of day when lovers must separate. Aubades were popular in medieval times, and unlike a serenade, which accompanies the evening and nightfall, an aubade evokes... Read Aubade Summary
Published in 1994, Autobiography of a Face is award-winning poet Lucy Grealy’s prose debut, a widely-celebrated memoir concerning the author’s struggles with cancer and disfigurement.At the age of 9, Lucy collides with a classmate during a game of dodgeball. The subsequent toothache leads her to seek medical assistance and doctors discover that she has Ewing’s sarcoma, a form of cancer with a 5% survival rate. She undergoes an operation to remove half of her jaw... Read Autobiography Of A Face Summary
Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast (1978) is author Robin McKinley’s debut novel. It’s an adaptation of the original Beauty and the Beast fairy tale written in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, with genre elements of fantasy and romance and marketed for a middle grade readership. McKinley’s version of the story maintains an 18th-century setting while modernizing thematic explorations of outer versus inner beauty, ideals of faithfulness and selflessness... Read Beauty Summary
“Big Blonde” is a short story written by Dorothy Parker. It was first published in 1929 in The Bookman (a prestigious New York City literary magazine) and won the O. Henry competition for the best story that same year. It was later published in Parker’s 1930 short-story collection Laments for the Living.This study guide refers to the online flipbook version of “Big Blonde.”Content Warning: The source text contains references to domestic violence, alcohol addiction, and... Read Big Blonde Summary
Published in 2004, Alice Hoffman’s novel Blackbird House chronicles a house on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and its inhabitants over a 200-year span. The story, which invokes elements of magical realism, begins during the War of 1812 and ends in the present day. Shifting between first-person and third-person point-of-view, the novel delves into the themes of Love as Motivation, Resilience Resulting from Adversity, and The Power of Place in Shaping Lives.This guide refers to the 2005... Read Blackbird House Summary
“Bliss” is a short story written by New Zealand author Katherine Mansfield. It was originally published in 1918 in The English Review and later republished in 1920 as a collection of short stories entitled Bliss and Other Stories. Katherine Mansfield was a contemporary of British writers such as Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando), D. H. Lawrence (Sons and Lovers, Women in Love), and James Joyce (Ulysses, Dubliners). As a Modernist story, “Bliss” focuses on the... Read Bliss Summary
Brian's Return (1999) is a young adult fiction novel and the fourth book in author Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet series. Paulsen draws on his personal experiences from the wilderness to create Brian’s outdoor adventure and survival narrative throughout the series, stating in the author note, “Virtually all that happens to Brian in these books has happened to me at some point in my life” (112). Paulsen was awarded the Newberry Honor in 1988 for Hatchet, the first... Read Brian's Return Summary
Brian’s Winter (1996), a young adult novel by Gary Paulsen, is the third book in the Hatchet series of survival stories. Brian’s Winter chronologically follows Hatchet, acting as an alternate ending to Hatchet in which Brian is not rescued, and must continue to survive in the woods through the winter. Paulsen uses his own firsthand knowledge of winter survival skills to create a vivid and realistic portrayal of winter in the Canadian woods.Other works by... Read Brian's Winter Summary
The chief protagonist of Brick Lane was born in an East Pakistan village in 1967, prior to Bangladesh Liberation War. In 1971, the nation won its independence only to suffer through a devastating famine and political turmoil marked by a succession of military coups. The narrative mostly takes place in 2001, concerning events in a Muslim immigrant community in London before and after the World Trade Center tragedy. In this span of a woman’s life... Read Brick Lane Summary
Brunelleschi’s Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture is a 2000 nonfiction book by Ross King. The book describes how Filippo Brunelleschi radically altered the course of architectural history, defying expectations by designing and building the dome for Florence’s cathedral during the early Renaissance. Receiving widespread praise from critics, King has been commended for making a complex subject accessible to lay readers. King is a bestselling nonfiction writer who lectures across Europe and North America... Read Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture Summary
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck was originally published in 1945. A Nobel Prize-winning writer, Steinbeck grew up in Salinas, California, which is near Monterey—the location of Cannery Row. Aside from a few years in Palo Alto, New York, and Los Angeles, Steinbeck spent most of his adult life living in Monterey County, and he drew on his personal experiences to write Cannery Row.Considered literary fiction or classic literature, Cannery Row is realistic and was written... Read Cannery Row Summary
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a key figure in the British Romantic Era of poetry wrote the Gothic narrative poem “Christabel” in two parts, the first in 1797, and the second in 1800. Though it was still unfinished, “Christabel” was published in 1816.“Christabel” is Coleridge’s longest poem, at almost 700 lines. It is also the least edited of Coleridge’s work. Most of the poem contrasts the innocent piety of Christabel with the experience and supernatural abilities of... Read Christabel Summary
Confessions, or Confessiones in the original Latin, is a book of spiritual reflection, philosophical commentary, and Biblical interpretation produced in the last century of the Western Roman Empire. Written around the year 400 CE by Saint Augustine of Hippo, a prominent Catholic bishop in the Roman province of Africa, the book is sometimes called the world’s first autobiography. Although this claim is inaccurate, Confessions has nevertheless born enormous influence on personal narrative writing in the... Read Confessions Summary
Cyrano de Bergerac: An Heroic Comedy in Five Acts by Edmond Rostand was originally published in 1898. Rostand was a popular poet and playwright in France during his lifetime. Cyrano de Bergerac is a five-act verse drama—a tragic romance, set in France in the mid-1600s. It was far more popular than all of Rostand’s other works and has been performed and adapted countless times since its initial successful run.Cyrano de Bergerac explores themes of Unrequited... Read Cyrano de Bergerac Summary
IntroductionN. H. Kleinbaum’s Dead Poets Society is a 1989 novel based on the motion picture written by Tom Schulman. The novel was released as a companion piece to the wildly popular film—also titled Dead Poets Society and released in 1989— which starred famous actors such as Robin Williams as Mr. Keating, and Ethan Hawke as Todd Anderson. The film scored high with critics, winning the Oscar in 1990 for Best Original Screenplay and receiving nominations... Read Dead Poets Society Summary
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) is a novel by American author Willa Cather. The story is loosely based on the experiences of Priests Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf as they sought to establish a Catholic diocese (an ecclesiastical district under the control of one particular bishop) in the newly acquired territory of New Mexico.A major figure in American literature, Cather is best known for the novels O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the... Read Death Comes for the Archbishop Summary
Death in Venice (1912) is a novella by celebrated German author Thomas Mann (1875-1955). The story follows Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who travels to Venice seeking inspiration and respite. There, he becomes infatuated with Tadzio, an exceptionally beautiful young boy whose ethereal presence awakens a profound and dangerous longing in Aschenbach. As Venice succumbs to a cholera epidemic, Aschenbach’s obsession leads to his downfall.Mann, the recipient of the 1929 Nobel Prize... Read Death in Venice Summary
In Dreamland, a young adult novel by Sarah Dessen, a teenage girl named Caitlin O’Koren reacts to the disappearance of her sister by breaking away from the path that was set out for her. The novel is broken into three parts that focus on the core of the conflicts in each section. Part I, “Cass,” traces the O’Koren family after Cass, the eldest of two daughters, runs away instead of attending Yale. Part II, entitled... Read Dreamland Summary
First published in 1994, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood is Fatima Mernissi’s memoir of her experience growing up in a harem in Fez, Morocco, in the 1940s. Mernissi, who received her PhD in political science from Brandeis University and won the Prince of Asturias Award and the Erasmus Prize for her feminist writing, was the author of several nonfiction works examining women’s place in the Islamic world.Dreams of Trespass encompasses Fatima’s life... Read Dreams of Trespass Summary
Duma Key by Stephen King is a novel in the literary-horror genre, praised for its eerie, spooky atmosphere and suspenseful build-up. Published in 2008, Duma Key is the first novel by King to be set in Florida. The book follows Edgar Freemantle as he moves from Minnesota to the island of Duma (one of the Florida Keys, or small islands) after a life-changing accident. Tormented by phantom-limb pain from his amputation and unable to remember... Read Duma Key Summary
Dumplin’, a YA novel by author Julie Murphy, is about a small-town Texas teen named Willowdean “Will” Dixon. Will is the book’s main character and first-person narrator. Through Will’s narration, the book tells the story of Will’s weight and how it affects her relationships with her former beauty pageant winning mother, Rosie Dixon; with her pretty best friend, Ellen Dryver; and with her romantic interest and coworker, the heartthrob Bo Larson. However, Will thinks that... Read Dumplin Summary
Ellen Foster is a work of adult fiction by US novelist Kaye Gibbons, first published by Algonquin Books in 1987. The novel was Gibbons’s debut, and it won the Sue Kaufman Prize for literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a notable citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Critics praised the novel for its unsentimental outlook and the wry, distinct voice of its protagonist. Ellen, a young girl living in the American... Read Ellen Foster Summary
“Fra Lippo Lippi” is a poem by Robert Browning (1812-1889), written in the form of a dramatic monologue. It was first published in the collection, Men and Women (1855) during the Victorian era. This historical poem centers on the 15th-century Carmelite monk, Fra Lippo Lippi, who was a famous Italian painter. Browning relied on an account of the monk’s life in Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1568), but took... Read Fra Lippo Lippi Summary
Enigmatic and strange, English poet Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” has sparked multiple interpretations since its publication in 1862. The poem helped launch her career and expand the Pre-Raphaelite art movement into literature.The long narrative poem centers on Lizzie’s rescue of her sister from an enchantment cast by malicious goblins. Fairy tales and folklore inspired many Victorian writers, who felt weary about England’s increasing industrialization.Often seen as an allegory, scholars have posited that the poem’s characters... Read Goblin Market Summary
John Gardner’s 1971 novel Grendel is a retelling of the story of Beowulf, an Anglo-Saxon epic poem from the 6th century, from the perspective of the villain, the monster Grendel. In Grendel, the monster Grendel is an anti-hero, challenging the conventions of traditionally heroic behavior as he tries to understand the world in which he lives. In 1982, an animated Australian film adaptation of the novel called Grendel Grendel Grendel was released in major cities... Read Grendel Summary
Here by Richard McGuire is a graphic novel published on December 4, 2014, by Pantheon Books. The graphic novel focuses on the same corner of a room over billions of years. It depicts the area long before the house is built and long after it falls. By using different visual styles, overlapping panels, and non-chronological narration, McGuire creates a narrative that comments on the nature of time and life. Here is considered a transformative work... Read Here Summary
I Am David by Anne Holm is a children’s historical fiction novel written in 1963. It was originally written in Danish but has since been translated into many languages, including English, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, French, and Konkani. It was first published in the United States under the name North to Freedom but eventually was retranslated into its original title. It was made into a movie in 2003. The novel received several awards... Read I Am David Summary
Originally published in 2002, Markus Zusak’s I Am the Messenger is a young adult realistic fiction novel. Ed Kennedy, the protagonist and narrator, is a 19-year-old cab driver whose average life takes an unexpected turn when he stops a bank robber. After this moment of heroism, he begins receiving mysterious playing cards with cryptic messages that lead him to people in need of his assistance. The novel is set in suburban Sydney and draws on... Read I Am The Messenger Summary
If on a winter’s night a traveler is a 1979 postmodernist novel by Italo Calvino. The dual narrative is composed of two parallel strands: numbered chapters in which the narrator directly describes to the audience the process of reading the book, and titled chapters constructed from hypothetical first chapters of various books that the audience is reading. The innovative novel has been praised by critics and hailed as highly influential.This guide uses the 1998 Vintage... Read If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Summary
The essay “In Praise of Shadows” was originally published in 1933 in Japan and was written by the Japanese author Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (1886-1965). His work spanned a wide array of subjects, including the cultural impact of World War II, sexuality, and family relationships. He was especially interested in exploring the cultural differences between Japan and the West. Tanizaki was awarded Japan’s Imperial Prize in Literature in 1949 and wrote novels, short stories, essays, plays, and... Read In Praise of Shadows Summary
“Kew Gardens” is a short story by British author Virginia Woolf, published privately in 1919 before appearing in Monday or Tuesday, Woolf’s 1921 collection of short stories. The story explores themes such as Moments of Being, The Connection Between Humanity and Nature, and Interpersonal Conflict.This guide refers to the version of “Kew Gardens” available in Project Gutenberg’s online edition of Monday or Tuesday.The story follows four pairs of people as they wander Kew Gardens, a... Read Kew Gardens Summary
Letters to a Young Poet is a collection of 10 letters written by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus, from February 1903 to December 1908. In an introduction to the book, Kappus describes how he came to begin his correspondence with Rilke. At the time, Kappus was a 19-year-old student at an Austrian military school. Though Kappus was set to become a military officer, he held aspirations of instead becoming a... Read Letters to a Young Poet Summary
Composed in the middle of July 1798, “Tintern Abbey” was the last poem submitted for the publication of Lyrical Ballads, which was already in the press at Bristol. As the coda to Lyrical Ballads, “Tintern Abbey” represents a pivotal modulation in Wordsworth’s poetic development and ambition, prefiguring much of his distinctive verse to follow. Its sustained meditative subjectivity, masterful control of tone, elevated theme, scale of conceptual development, and orchestrated musicality mark the convergence of... Read Tintern Abbey Summary
Locomotion, Jacqueline Woodson’s 2003 novel in verse, follows the perspective of Lonnie Collins Motion, nicknamed Locomotion. After his parents die in a fire and his sister is adopted, Lonnie grieves and navigates life, first in a group home and then with Miss Edna, his foster mother. Through poetry, he slowly finds joy in life again, highlighting the themes of The Search for Identity and Belonging, The Healing Power of Writing, and The Enduring Support of... Read Locomotion Summary
Longbourn (2013) is a work of fiction by British author Jo Baker, who is the author of several other novels of historical fiction and literary suspense. Longbourn depicts what life is like for the servants of the Bennet family of Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice. While events in Austen’s book frame this novel, Longbourn follows the inner lives of housemaid Sarah, housekeeper Mrs. Hill, and James Smith, the mysterious footman who shows up... Read Longbourn Summary
Lucky Broken Girl is a middle-grade historical novel by Ruth Behar. Main character Ruthie Mizrahi, an immigrant from Cuba, lives with her parents and brother in 1966 Queens. Together they try to quell their homesickness for Cuba while seeking new opportunities in America. When a car accident injures Ruthie, she becomes bedridden in a full body cast for over a year; during that time, challenges and fears she never anticipated give her a new perspective... Read Lucky Broken Girl Summary
Teodoro Golfín, a renowned eye surgeon, has just arrived at the fictional town of Villamojada in Northern Spain in search of the mines of Socrates. At the request of the wealthy Francisco Penáguilas, Teodoro has come to attempt to cure his son, Pablo, of his blindness. On his way to the mines, Teodoro gets lost. He is aided by the arrival of Pablo, who offers to lead Teodoro to the mines where the doctor can... Read Marianela Summary
Edith Maude Eaton, who wrote under the pen name Sui Sin Far, wrote Mrs. Spring Fragrance in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. A Chicago press published the collection in 1912. Eaton, who is of Chinese-English heritage, was born in England and grew up in Canada. When she migrated to the western United States as an adult, Eaton penned her first published collection of short stories, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, which details the Asian-American experience. During the... Read Mrs Spring Fragrance Summary
My Name is Red (originally titled Benim Adim Kirmizi) is a 1998 historical novel by the Nobel Prize winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk. Set in late-16th century Istanbul, the novel explores cultural tensions stemming from contemporary philosophical understandings of visual art. Told from the viewpoints of many different animate and inanimate characters—including Muslim and Jewish individuals, a corpse, the color red, and paintings of a horse, a devil, and a dog—the novel integrates elements of... Read My Name is Red Summary
My Sister, the Serial Killer, is a novel by Nigerian-born British writer Oyinkan Braithwaite, originally published in the UK in 2019. Set in Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, this darkly satirical, structurally experimental crime story about the extremes of family bonds bears an unusually revealing and literal title, and it has been longlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize. The novel was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2019 Amazon Publishing Readers’ Awards... Read My Sister, the Serial Killer Summary
My Year of Meats is a contemporary novel of literary fiction which focuses on the American meat industry, global capitalism, sex and gender, and artmaking. Written by Booker Prize-nominee Ruth L. Ozeki and published in 1998, the novel won the 1998 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. This guide refers to the 1999 Penguin paperback edition of the text. Plot Summary Jane Takagi-Little, a Japanese American documentarian living in New York City in 1991, gets a phone call... Read My Year of Meats Summary
News From Nowhere by William Morris (1834-1896) is a work of speculative science fiction and socialist utopian imagination. The narrator, William Guest, is mysteriously transported from 1890 to the 21st century. As he travels through a version of London that is both familiar and strange, he records his impressions of the socialist society that has come to replace the industrialized, capitalist one of his own time. Through conversations with a number of 21st-century Londoners, Guest... Read News from Nowhere Summary
No Summit out of Sight (2014) is a young adult memoir written by Jordan Romero and Linda LeBlanc. Jordan Romero is the youngest person to ever climb the Seven Summits. The novel explores themes including The Power of Setting and Achieving Goals, Focusing on a Personal Best, and The Value of Teamwork.This guide uses the 2014 Simon & Schuster edition of the memoir.SummaryFourth grader Jordan Romero gazes at a mural of the Seven Summits (the... Read No Summit Out Of Sight Summary
Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel written by the British author W. Somerset Maugham. The novel follows the maturation of a young man named Philip Carey as he grows up in England at the very end of the 19th century. The novel incorporates elements of both realism and modernism and has been interpreted as having some autobiographical inspiration drawn from Maugham’s own life. By describing events from Philip’s life, Maugham develops themes related to... Read Of Human Bondage Summary
On Beauty by the celebrated British author Zadie Smith was published in 2005. On Beauty was shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction. Smith is known for writing novels and essays that analyze the intersections of identity in the contemporary world with nuance, clarity, and empathy. She is also known to be influenced by the classic English author E.M. Forster. On Beauty is loosely based on Forster’s masterpiece... Read On Beauty Summary
One! Hundred! Demons! is a semi-autobiographical genre-defying graphic novel by American cartoonist and pedagogue, Lynda Barry. Over the course of her career as a prominent cartoonist with nationally syndicated comic strips, published collections, and illustrated novels, Barry has received many national and state-wide awards for her work, including two Eisner awards and MacArthur Genius Grant.Originally published serially in Salon magazine, the collected cartoon chapters were collected and published by Sasquatch Books in 2002, and later... Read One! Hundred! Demons! Summary
On Photography is a 1977 collection of seven essays by American scholar, activist, and philosopher Susan Sontag. The essays were published in the New York Review of Books from 1973 to 1977 before publication in a single volume. Sontag explores the history of photography and its relationship to reality, the fine arts, and sociopolitical power structures. Individual essays explore these various relationships between photography and the world through a different lens before the culminating exploration... Read On Photography Summary
Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (published in 1859) is a seminal work in evolutionary biology of great historical and scientific importance. Darwinian thought, especially regarding evolution, is now commonly accepted as the most powerful theory in biology and the natural history of species—and the system of natural selection that this theory advanced has been applied (and misappropriated)... Read On the Origin of Species Summary
On the Sublime is a treatise on aesthetics and literary criticism originally written in Greek between the first and third centuries AD. The author is not definitively known, but the text is typically credited with the name Longinus. Although the work has come to be known as On the Sublime in English, its subject is advice to writers on “the essentials of a noble and impressive style.” For this reason, G. M. A. Grube translates... Read On the Sublime Summary
IntroductionPamela is an epistolary novel (told through letters), written by Samuel Richardson and first published in 1740. It is considered one of the first novels written in English, and significantly contributed to the development of this genre. Richardson, a 51-year-old printer when the novel was published, began the project to provide moral instruction to young women who might find themselves vulnerable to seduction while employed by wealthy men. The novel advocates for the importance of... Read Pamela Summary
Paradiso is the third and concluding part of The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri’s three-part epic narrative poem. It completes the allegorical journey initiated by the first two parts, Inferno (Hell) and Purgatorio (Purgatory). Beatrice, who symbolizes Dante’s ideal woman and who had previously accompanied him through the past part of Purgatory, here accompanies him as he journeys through the nine levels or spheres of Heaven, which are represented by various celestial bodies. In each sphere... Read Paradiso Summary
Willa Cather’s short story “Paul’s Case” was published in 1905 in McClure's Magazine. In its original iteration, the story was titled “Paul’s Case: A Study in Temperament,” but it was later shortened to the current title. The story became a popular one of Cather’s, in part because it was one of the only few that she allowed to be anthologized, but also for the debates over its interpretation. “Paul’s Case” was turned into a TV... Read Paul's Case Summary
Born in 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi, Eudora Welty was a fiction writer and photographer who predominantly wrote about the American South. After finishing college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Welty spent her entire adult life in Jackson, and her stories often reflect the intimacies of everyday Mississippi life. Published in 1939, “Petrified Man” is a Southern Gothic short story that offers a glimpse of an average morning for two women at a hair salon in... Read Petrified Man Summary
When William Inge’s play Picnic opened on Broadway in 1953, it received much popular and critical acclaim. In the post-World War II era, in the face of rising paranoia and fear of communism, the televisions that had become fixtures in American homes broadcast idealized portrayals of small-town family life with shows such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952), Make Room for Daddy (1953), Leave it to Beaver (1957), and The Donna Reed Show... Read Picnic Summary
Rebecca, a bestselling novel by famed English writer Daphne du Maurier, was published in 1938, and has never gone out of print. The winner of the National Book Award for favorite novel of 1938, Rebecca has been adapted numerous times, including Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film version, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and a 1997 television miniseries. It was most recently adapted for a Netflix film in 2020 by the same name. Rebecca... Read Rebecca Summary
Sense and Sensibility (1811) was the first published novel of English writer Jane Austen (1775-1817). She published it anonymously, identifying herself only as "a lady." It tells the story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, who find love after their father dies and they are plunged into a more modest lifestyle. Sense and Sensibility’s continual presence in the cultural imagination is evident in its numerous film and TV adaptations, including the award-winning 1995 version... Read Sense and Sensibility Summary
William Shakespeare is the author of “Sonnet 130.” The sonnet is one of 154 sonnets that Shakespeare published in 1609 under the title Shakes-spears Sonnets. The first 126 sonnets address a young man, while Sonnets 127-152 focus on a mysterious woman. As with “Sonnet 130,” the sonnets about the enigmatic woman concern ideas of love and beauty and directly undercut typical representations of both. Thus, “Sonnet 130” is satire; it makes fun of how adored... Read Sonnet 130 Summary
William Shakespeare is the best-known author of the English Renaissance—also known as the Early Modern Period and the Elizabethan Age. Though readers’ attention tends to be more riveted toward his plays, Shakespeare published 154 sonnets during his exceptionally prolific career, in addition to the longer-form poems Venus and Adonis (1593), The Rape of Lucrece (1594), and The Phoenix and the Turtle (1601). Fifteen editions of Venus and Adonis—a poem in the form of 199 six-line... Read Sonnet 18 Summary
“Sonnet 55” (1609) is an English love sonnet by renowned poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The sonnet is part of Shakespeare’s Fair Youth sonnet sequence, which makes up the first 126 of his sonnets. This sonnet follows a number of the Fair Youth sonnets in the way it praises the fair youth’s beauty and claims his beauty is eternal. In this sonnet specifically, Shakespeare claims that the subject’s beauty will outlive all monuments of princes and... Read Sonnet 55 Summary
Published in 2018 by Nebula Award-winning author Naomi Novik, Spinning Tales is a modern take on coming-of-age fairy tales. The novel explores the dangers of pride and the complexity of responsibility set in a Slavic fantasy world made of the familiar and the fantastic alike. While the story centers around Miryem Mandelstam, other character perspectives demonstrate the quintessentially human experiences of life—frustration, longing, confusion, and growing up.Plot SummaryThe teenage Miryem finds herself in a do-or-die... Read Spinning Silver Summary
Lissa Price’s Starters is a young adult science fiction novel set in the near future after the Spore Wars, during which biological weapons were used against the United States and wiped out much of the unvaccinated middle-aged population. As a result, many teens were left without families, and the elderly feared for their place in society. Starters without grandparents were barred from essentially every type of work. This led to teens being rounded up to... Read Starters Summary
Steppenwolf, originally published in German in 1927, then translated into English in 1929, is the eighth novel published by Swiss German novelist Hermann Hesse. The novel was commercially successful upon publication, and it remains a popular novel to the present day. However, Hesse remarked that whereas his intention was to find humor in life and resist despair, Steppenwolf has often been misunderstood as a glorification of suffering. Much of Hesse’s body of work addresses spiritual... Read Steppenwolf Summary
“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is a short, structured poem written in 1922 by the American poet Robert Frost, one of the foremost poets of the 20th century. The poem was originally published in 1923 in the magazine New Republic, and then in Frost’s poetry collection New Hampshire. The poem explores themes of nature, beauty, duty, life, and death, and is written using simple and accessible language that has made it beloved by... Read Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening Summary
