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...

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....

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...

Continental Drift is the fourth novel from Russell Banks and marks the turning point of his career. The novel earned Banks the John Dos Passos Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award as well as being a finalist for the Pulitzer...

The occupants of a British manor house usually become the focus of a novel due to whatever particular machinations are at work to drive the narrative. Those machinations usually range from throwing suspicion of a murder onto one another in order...

Birthday Letters is Ted Hughes' final collection of poetry. It was published in 1998, months prior to Hughes' death. It contains eighty eight poems and is viewed as the poet's most successful and revered work. It is 208 pages long.

Birthday...

John Gower’s Confession Amantis exists in at least three separate and distinct versions. The very first edition published in 1390 is generally regarded as the definitive edition for scholarly and academic attention. That edition comprises more...

Call it Sleep is a fictitious novel written by Henry Roth and follows the life of a young Jewish boy who lives in the Lower East Side of New York. The book was published in 1934 by Robert O. Ballou's publishing company.

The story follows David...

Big Sur was written by Jack Kerouac in 1962. The book was published five years after his novel On the Road put him and the Beat Generation in the national spotlight.

The “Beat” in Beat Generation was defined by Kerouac himself as having several...

The version of the Christian Holy Bible commonly referred to as the King James Version goes by the more technically correct name of the “Authorized Version.” The creation of the Authorized Version of the Holy Bible can be directly traced back to...

The Crying Game is a controversial 1991 thriller directed by Neil Jordan, which went from art house cult favorite to worldwide sensation on the basis of the film’s most shocking revelation. The Crying Game took advantage of viral marketing before...