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.
"The Monkey's Paw" is a chilling and suspenseful short story by W.W Jacobs, first included in Harper’s Magazine and then published in England in 1902 in his collection "The Lady of the Barge." The story has been included in dozens of collections,...
Synge's one-act play Riders to the Sea (1904) deals with the lives and manners of a cross-section of humanity. While the play is concerned with local matters, Synge represents these matters with a universal interest. In other words, Synge, like...
Bret Harte’s short story “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” is one of the most anthologized examples of the subgenre of American literature known as Regionalism. The identifying characteristics of Regionalism include an emphasis on replicating dialect...
"Christmas Bells" is both an occasional poem written during the Civil War, and a general message about having hope during times of despair. Longfellow wrote it on December 25th, 1863; it was published in a juvenile magazine in 1865 and included in...
Longfellow wrote "The Day is Done" in 1844 and included it as the proem to his anthology The Waif, a selection of sentimental poems mostly about nature that came out at the end of 1844. Some of the poets included were Percy Shelley, Robert...
The poem was written in 1859 and first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1860. It was later included in the collection Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863). Longfellow wrote the poem a few years after resigning from his professorship at Harvard to...
"A Psalm of Life" was first published in The Knickerbocker, attributed only to "L." It was then included in Voices of the Night, published in 1838 not long after Longfellow took on the position of Smith Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard...
“Paul Revere’s Ride” is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s most famous poem and certainly one of the most famous poems in American literature. Revered in its time and loved by schoolchildren today, it has suffered from critical dismissal and...
Evangeline is one of Longfellow’s most famous works, and with The Song of Hiawatha, one of his longest. Critics designate this poem as the one that secured his literary preeminence.
The provenance of the poem is an interesting one. On April 5th,...
The Infinite Sea is the second book in a published trilogy by Rick Yancey. The first book, The 5th Wave was turned into a movie, starring Chloe Grace Moretz, but it was not well-received. The following sequel is called The Lost Star. The Infinite...
The 5th Wave is the first book of a science-fiction/fantasy trilogy by Rick Yancey and was published in 2013 by Penguin Group. The story is written from a first-person (diary) perspective from the viewpoint of Cassie Sullivan, the protagonist of...
The Death Cure is the last book in the Maze Runner trilogy, and the third book in the overall series. It was written by James Dashner and published on October 11, 2011, by Delacorte Press. Like the other books in the trilogy, this book will have a...
The Kill Order is the prequel to the Maze Runner series. It was published on August 14, 2012, by Delacorte Press. Like the Maze Runner trilogy, The Kill Order is set in the future. It is, however, set 13 years before the Trials with Thomas began....
We Need New Names is a coming-of-age story. A young girl named Darling lives in poverty in Zimbabwe following political unrest. She often steals guavas along with a group of other children, one of whom is pregnant, and is forced to attend church...
A tightly constructed, psychologically incisive commentary on race relations in the early decades of the 20th century, Passing (1929) is the single best-known work of African-American novelist Nella Larsen. On one level, the book is a study of a...
The Scorch Trials is the second book of the Maze Runner trilogy. It was written by James Dashner soon after The Maze Runner, the first installment of the trilogy. It was published on September 18, 2010, by Delacorte Press. No one knows if it is a...
Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth is one of its author’s most beloved works. Engaging the themes of space and time, geology, travel, and discovery, it is a fantastic fusion of science and adventure. This book is part of the series...
The Witches was written in 1983 by famed children’s author Roald Dahl. At this point, Dahl had written many of his most well known works, such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. The book was dedicated to Roald Dahl...
Outliers was written by Malcolm Gladwell and published in 2008. Gladwell wrote the book to investigate the factors that lead to high levels of success; as Gladwell believes that singular and unusual things “always [make] the best stories,” his...
"The Necklace and Other Stories" is a collection of stories written by Maupassant in the 1870s and 1880s, first published in French (mostly in magazines) and later published in collected volumes and translated into a number of foreign languages....
The third installment in Ally Condie's Matched trilogy, Reached follows Cassia Reyes, Xander Carrow, and Ky Markham as they fight for their right to choose in the dystopian Society turned fallible Rising turned medical nightmare. The story is told...
A View from the Bridge is one of Arthur Miller’s most famous plays, renowned for its intensity of passion and echoes of Greek tragedy.
The work grew out of Miller’s fascination with Red Hook, a Brooklyn neighborhood only a few blocks away from...
The BFG was written in 1982 by Roald Dahl. Dahl was a well-known author at this point, having already published popular books such as Fantastic Mr. Fox, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Danny, the Champion of the World. These books...
Children of Men is a British-American dystopian, science-fiction, thriller film directed by Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón and released in 2006. The screenplay is loosely based on P.D. James' 1992 novel The Children of Men, though there are some...
