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.
Settlers of the Marsh is a novel first published in 1925 and written by Frederick Philip Grove. Grove was Canadian author and translator, especially while he was still living in Germany, where he translated a large volume of works. Once he moved...
The Struggle of the Naga Tribe is a play written by Indonesian poet, activist, actor, director and playwright W.S. Rendra. Many of Rendra's plays in the 1970s, including this one, were banned as the content of his work was a criticism of the...
The Black Stallion was published in 1941 and was written by Walter Farley whilst he was still in high school. It was published whilst he was an undergraduate at Columbia University and was an instant hit. Farley based the character of Alec Ramsay...
Virginia Hamilton published her young adult novel M.C. Higgins, the Great in 1974 and thereupon set a new standard for honors in that field. Hamilton became the first African-American writer in history to win the nation’s highest honor for...
Published in 2003, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time has won more than 17 literary awards, including the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, sold more than 10 million copies and grossed 14 million in 2004 alone.
Haddon admits that he...
Harold Pinter was working as an actor in England when he stayed briefly at a dilapidated boardinghouse that would serve as his inspiration for both The Birthday Party and The Room. As he has explained in many published works, he wrote more from...
A Journal of the Plague Year is one of Daniel Defoe's most popular and strangest works; it is an amalgam of history and fiction that attempts to relate what life was like in London during the plague of 1665-66. Published in 1722, nearly 57 years...
The novel Volkswagen Blues is a novel that was written by Jacques Poulin. It was originally published in French in 1984 and was translated into English in 1988. The novel was well acclaimed, being nominated for the Governor General's Award for...
The Trumpet of the Swan is a book by acclaimed children's writer E.B.White. It was published in 1970 and tells the story of a trumpeter swan named Louis who is born mute. Over the course of the story, Louis tries to compensate for his lack of...
Joseph Campbell was a comparative mythologist who realized after years of studying that there was a dominant archetype for all human myths and stories. He set out to study many different cultures and their various ancient myths before concluding...
The Vercelli Book is an Old English codex, or book, compiled in the late 10th century and written in Anglo-Saxon square minuscule. Individual texts within the codex were originally written earlier--some possibly over two centuries before the the...
Imperium in Imperio by Sutton E. Griggs holds a very unusual distinctive place in literary history. It is the first, last, and only utopian novel centering on African-American society published prior to the 20th century. Griggs was a college...
The legend of Tarzan was born from desperation and boredom. Edgar Rice Burroughs desperately wanted to be a writer, but had run through a long list of miscellaneous jobs: railroad cop, storekeeper, gold prospector, lightbulb peddler, and even...
The Taqwacores is Michael Muhammad Knight’s first novel, originally published in zines. After being endorsed by different labels and people, the novel was published by Autonomedia. The Taqwacores is a fictional novel that tells of an Islamic punk...
The Belle's Stratagem (A Comedy in Five Acts) was written by talented author Hannah Cowley and was published by Oliver and Boyd. Cowley was born during 1743 and died during 1809. This creative work is a romantic comedy that turned out to be the...
The House of Bernarda Alba was written in 1936 during a flurry of creative activity for Lorca. He liked to say that his plays took years to form in his mind, and then a matter of weeks to write. Though this claim is not represented in the process...
The Joy Luck Club is Amy Tan's first novel, published in 1989. Just two years before the book's release, Tan was succeeding as a speech writer and self-proclaimed workaholic. Feeling unfulfilled, she found her calling in fiction writing. Tan...
The story of Sundiata recounts the story of the founding of the Mali Empire in West Africa. The Mali empire was one of the three great medieval West African empires (preceded by the Ghana Empire and followed by the Songhay Empire), and was located...
Mr. Popper's Penguins, written by Florence and Richard Atwater, was written in 1938. It is a children's classic now.
Richard Atwater wrote the book before he fell ill with a stroke and was disabled, where his wife, Florence Atwater finished and...
Sherman Alexie is an American novelist born on October 7, 1966 in Spokane, Washington. As a 6-month-old baby, he suffered from a brain condition called hydrocephalus and underwent surgery that successfully fixed his disability. Alexie grew up on...
The first autobiography written by a former slave, Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is also one of the most widely-read and well-regarded of the slave narrative genre. It was published in 1789, at a time...
She Stoops to Conquer was first produced in London in 1773, and was a massive success. It was reputed to have created an applause that was yet unseen in the London theatre, and almost immediately entered the repertory of respectable companies....
Published by Frederick Douglass in 1845 at the age of 27, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave is one of the most significant and influential works by an American author in history. Douglass's narrative was an...
Yukio Mishima's The Sound of Waves was published in 1954 in Japanese. It was translated into English by Meredith Weatherby and published in North America in 1956. It is a sweet and simple tale of two lovers on an idyllic, isolated Japanese island...