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.
Emily Henry's Happy Place was published in 2023 by publisher Berkley. With every one of her novels, Henry aims to create a book that will appeal to everyone—men and women alike. Her novels are often filled with relatable themes that speak to what...
In her 2023 novel Weyward, Emilia Hart took a significant risk. Rather than telling a simple story in a single setting, she decided to follow three separate but interconnected story threads. The first story is set in the modern day, in 2019, and...
Eastbound is the 2023 English-language translation of Maylis de Kerangal’s novel Tangente vers l'est which was originally published in 2012. The direct translation of the original title would be “Tangent Toward the East” but the revised title...
Donna Barba Higuera's The Last Cuentista was published in October 2021 to great fanfare. A work of science fiction, The Last Cuentista follows a twelve-year-old girl named Petra Peña, who lives on an Earth beset by terrible, tragic conditions...
Kim by Rudyard Kipling was first published serially in McClure's Magazine and Cassell's Magazine. It was later published as a book by Macmillan and Co. Ltd. in October 1901. The story takes place in the late 19th century, after the Second Afghan...
“An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” is Immanuel Kant’s famous essay published in 1784. In this essay, he explains what enlightenment is, and ways to achieve it. It is one of the most debated essays on political philosophy. Kant...
"The Mountain" is a 1952 poem by Elizabeth Bishop. First published in Poetry magazine, this work was not included in any volume of poetry during Bishop's lifetime. It is written from the perspective of a speaker trying to make sense of herself and...
“To Althea, from Prison” is a poem by the English poet Richard Lovelace. It is about the poet’s experience in prison for his support of King Charles I. This occurred at a time in England when pro-royalty and pro-parliament factions were in...
Alan Gratz's Ground Zero (2021) is a young-adult historical novel about an American boy who escapes the World Trade Center during the 9/11 terrorist attacks and an Afghan girl who tries to stop her brother from joining the Taliban. The separate...
Flowers for Algernon was originally published as a short story in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Fiction, the highest prize for a short story in the science fiction field. Keyes says that the...
As a poet, Robert Frost was greatly influenced by the emotions and events of everyday life. Within a seemingly banal event from a normal day—watching the ice weigh down the branches of a birch tree, mending the stones of a wall, mowing a field of...
The Canterbury Tales is at once one of the most famous and most frustrating works of literature ever written. Since its composition in late 1300s, critics have continued to mine new riches from its complex ground, and started new arguments about...
Published in 1850, The Scarlet Letter is considered Nathaniel Hawthorne's most famous novel--and the first quintessentially American novel in style, theme, and language. Set in seventeenth-century Puritan Massachusetts, the novel centers around...
Twelfth Night is one of the most commonly performed Shakesperean comedies, and was also successful during Shakespeare's lifetime. The first surviving account of the play's performance comes from a diary entry written early in 1602, talking about...
Published mainly in the 1830s and 1840s, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe have come to represent the height of 19th-century tales of the macabre. One of the American Romantics, Poe showed an interest in the power of emotions and often sought to...
Cervantes is considered one of the greatest writers of all time. Often, Cervantes is compared to Shakespeare. Both men have become "national literary treasures" glowing during "golden ages" of literature. Cervantes was writing along aside a number...
The Turn of the Screw was originally published as a serialized novel in Collier's Weekly. Robert J. Collier, whose father had founded the magazine, had just become editor. At the time, James was already a well-known author, having already...
Emily Dickinson wrote close to 1800 poems in her lifetime. Her poems are often extremely short, waste no words, and subvert the traditional forms of the day. She is also fond of the dash as a tool to signify a pause or provide emphasis. Her poems,...
"Filling Station" is a poem by the twentieth-century American writer Elizabeth Bishop. First published in her 1965 collection Questions of Travel, the work mines questions of love, kinship, and connection. It takes place at a filling station (i.e....