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.
Doctor Faustus is the Thomas Mann’s novel. It had been started in 1943 and published 4 years later with the title: “The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, Told by a Friend”.
Doctor Faustus is the most significant and large-scale work of...
Doctor Zhivago has one of the strangest stories of publication in modern fiction. Written by Russian author Boris Pasternak, the book was initially published in Italy in 1957 and would not become available inside the Soviet Union for years....
Published in 1943, Four Quartets is a group of four poems released separately and written by T.S. Eliot. Many of the poems in the collection were admired by critics, but other writers considered them to be too religious in nature. The collection...
Spawning a highly successful movie adaption, Eight Men Out is a sports novel written by Eliot Asinof and published in 1963. It is his most popular work.
Eight Men Out centers around the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, when eight members of the Chicago...
Meena Alexander's Fault Lines was first published in 1993 and expanded in 2003. It is a memoir that, like many of Alexander's other works, focuses primarily on "trauma, migration, and memory," as well as trauma's "impact on subjectivity, and the...
History of Rome, or Roman History, is a series of 80 books which chronicles the history of Rome from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy until the year 229 C.E., six years before the author’s death. The books were written over the course of 22 years...
The title characters the film Eight Men Out are those eight ballplayers for the 1919 Chicago White Sox who were banned from baseball for allegedly throwing the World Series. When you hear the story of the team that came to be referred to as the...
Gertrude Stein was an American author, and one of America's most well-known expatriates. Although born in the United States, Stein moved around as a child and eventually settled down in France, believing that Paris was the ideal place to create...
In The End of Utopia, Russell Jacoby arguably argues that the idea of politics itself is coming to an end altogether. In a political contest, he states, people compete in viewpoints for the best wave of the future. However, everyone has already...
Following hard upon the Valentine that was Bela Lugosi’s immensely popular portrayal of Count Dracula, Universal Studios execs were doubtlessly giving thanks nine months and a week later for the early Christmas gift that was Boris Karloff’s...
Fall on Your Knees is a novel written by Ann-Marie MacDonald and was first published in 1996 in Canada but then republished on October 2002 by Pocket books.
The novel follows the life of the Piper Family throughout the 19th and 20th century. The...
Despair is Vladimir Nabokov's novel in Russian, first published in the Paris émigré journal "Contemporary notes" in 1934. In 1936, it was published as a book in the publishing house "Petropolis" in Berlin.
Despair is the sixth Russian novel...
Marcel Proust’s life-consuming literary epic is not just merely one novel, but a series of books. Throughout the 20th century, this collection of volumes was more often than not referred to by the collective title of Remembrance of Things Past....
Marivaux, French writer of the 18th century composed The Game of Love and Chance, a three-act romantic comedy that was first displayed on January the 23rd of 1730 by the Théâtre-Italien in the Hôtel de Bourgogne, one of the most famous Parisian...
The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche diverge significantly from the collected works of most other philosophers. Although certain concepts and theories recur with frequently and ideas are repeated often enough to become motifs, Nietzsche’s writings...
The History of Rome (also known as the Compendium of Roman History) was written by Velleius Paterculus, a soldier and historian. It was published during 1924 by Harvard University Press. This written work is a summary of Rome's history between the...
Demons is the sixth novel written by Fyodor Dostoevsky and published in 1871-1872. It’s one of the most politicized novels, which Dostoevsky wrote under the impression from the occurrence of shoots of the terrorist and radical movements among the...
The year was 1919. Herman Hesse already published four novels. His fifth novel, Demian, would be published using a pen name, Emil Sinclair. Sinclair would go on to win the Theodore Fontane Prize for Best Debut Novel of the Year for Demian. Hesse...
The genesis of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame can be traced back to a single word. That word was “fate” written in Greek and carved into a wall on one the Notre Dame cathedral towers. From that chance discovery did the author...
Many critics argue that Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 film adaption of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V” is one of the greatest cinematic recreations of Shakespearean literature ever. The film, which was shot primarily on intricate theatrical sets with a...
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) was an important Ancient Roman poet. He was closely integrated into Roman society, as he joined Brutus' army, before becoming a highly respected scribe and poet. He was also well educated, as he studied in Rome as...
In between the more famous Tortilla Flat and Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck published what may be viewed as a trial run for his famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath. In Dubious Battle is also set in California and is also concerned with migrant...
The short story that many students and reader confront under the title “The Grand Inquisitor” was, is and likely always will be a fully integrated yet curiously independent standalone chapter in The Brothers Karamazov. In any other definitive...
Deliverance is a 1972 dramatic thriller movie produced and directed by John Boorman. It stars are Jon Voight and Burt Reynolds. The movie is based on the book of the same name by James Dickey and the author had a small role in the film as the...