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After establishing herself as one of the leading 20th-century poets in Canada, the publication of Surfacing in 1972 instantly confirmed Margaret Atwood’s status as one the country’s most important novelists. Atwood’s unnamed heroine goes into the...

The Candy House is a speculative fiction novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan, first published in 2022. The novel follows the intersecting lives of various characters in a series of stylistically diverse short stories as they...

“The Badger” is a poem by the English Romantic poet John Clare. It describes the traditional sport of “badger baiting,” in which a badger is captured and made to fight with dogs until it dies. The poem was published in 1820, as part of Clare’s...

“First Love” is a love poem by the English Romantic poet John Clare. Clare was born in 1793 in the small village of Helpstone. Before leaving school at the age of 12, he developed a love of poetry. His first book, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life...

Published in 1988, The Shadow Lines is a novel by award-winning Indian writer Amitav Ghosh. It recounts the story of the narrator's coming of age in Calcutta and the sweeping impact of political violence on his life.

The novel is told from a...

A Midsummer Night's Dream is first mentioned by Francis Meres in 1598, leading many scholars to date the play between 1594 and 1596. It is likely to have been written around the same period Romeo and Juliet was created. Indeed, many similarities...

"I Am!" laments the difficulty of asserting an individual identity in a hostile world. First published in 1848, it is one of the most famous poems by the nineteenth-century English poet John Clare. Clare was born in 1793 in a small village to...

The Aspern Papers is a novella by Henry James, first published serially in 1888 in The Atlantic Monthly. It was later released as a book in the same year. The novella explores an unnamed literary biographer's quest to obtain letters written...

Graves wrote the novel “I, Claudius” in 1934. The book is presented as a secret autobiography of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus (or Claudius) who was the Emperor of the Roman Empire from 44 to 51 AD. In order the maintain this concept,...

The Legend of Good Women is a long poem about women who were faithful in love. It comprises a prologue and nine short stories, the last of which is unfinished. The prologue is the best-known portion of the poem, and apparently also Chaucer’s...

John Milton was born on December 9, 1608. Milton's father was a scrivener and, perhaps more importantly, a devout Puritan, who had been disinherited by his Roman Catholic family when he turned Protestant. In April 1625, just after the accession of...

Jon Krakauer's nonfiction book Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith was first published in July 2003. The text follows two parallel storylines: the founding and development of the early Mormon church in the nineteenth century, and...

"Tableau" is a poem by American writer Countee Cullen describing an interracial romance between two men. Originally published in 1925, the poem appeared in Cullen's first poetry collection, Color. Cullen was born in 1903, supposedly in Louisville,...

"From the Dark Tower" is a poem by American author Countee Cullen detailing the struggle of Black individuals to receive recognition for their work. Originally published in 1927, the poem appeared in Cullen's second collection, Copper Sun. Cullen...

Countee Cullen (1903 – 1946) was an American poet, primarily known as one of the most celebrated figures of the Harlem Renaissance. His work is recognized for its formal versatility as well as its thoughtful examination of race in America. Cullen...

“Yet Do I Marvel” was published in Countee Cullen’s first and most famous poetry collection, Color (1925). At the time, he was just twenty-two years old. Alongside “Heritage” and “Incident,” this poem is one of Cullen's best-known. As a perfectly...

Natasha Trethewey (1966-) is one of the most celebrated contemporary American poets of the last twenty years. Her poetry is recognized for its formal inventiveness and deep explorations of the legacy of race and prejudice in American history. She...

"Saturday's Child" is a poem by American writer Countee Cullen about economic and racial inequality. Originally published in 1925, the poem appeared in Cullen's first collection, Color. Cullen claimed to be born in Louisville, Kentucky, though...

Another Country is a novel by noted American author James Baldwin, first published in 1962 by Dial Press. It took Baldwin over thirteen years to write, and he finished it in Istanbul on a trip he had taken to break out of his creative stalemate.

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All American Boys is a young-adult novel, co-written by American authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely and published in 2015. They were motivated to write the book after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Missouri by a white police officer...

E. Lockhart's We Were Liars is a young-adult novel about Cadence Sinclair Eastman, a privileged teenager whose carefree summers at her grandfather's private island are disrupted by a traumatic accident she can't recall. After returning to the...

“Truth” is a short poem by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Often referred to as the father of English literature, Chaucer is best known today for The Canterbury Tales, a sequence of tales told by pilgrims fleeing the plague. However, during his...

“Prayer Before Birth” is a poem written by Irish poet Louis MacNeice in 1944, published as the first poem in his collection Springboard. In the poem, MacNeice expresses concerns about the ongoing conflict of World War II. "Prayer Before Birth"...

Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian author, diplomat, and journalist best known for his novels One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. He is often considered the father of "magical realism," a literary device that infuses...