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Set in the 1850s and first published in 1899, Charles W. Chesnutt’s "The Passing of Grandison" is a short story about a Southern slave owner's son's attempt to free a slave whose stubborn loyalty foils his plans.

In an era when it is a federal...

“I Think of Thee” is an Italian sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which first appeared in her 1850 collection Sonnets from the Portuguese. In the work, a speaker describes her desire to imagine and fantasize about a lover, who is addressed in...

Walter Benjamin’s essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" has become one of the landmark texts in the field of cultural theory. Benjamin was a fringe member of a highly influential group of German intellectuals in the 1930s...

"Danse Russe" is an early poem by William Carlos Williams, published in 1916, about a young father dancing alone in front of a mirror. Williams was a major figure in the Imagism and Modernism literary movements. In his poetry, he focused on paring...

"Mrs Midas" is a poem written by Carol Ann Duffy, a Scottish poet and former British Poet Laureate. As its name implies, “Mrs Midas” is a creative, subtle retelling of the Greek myth of Midas’s touch. In the myth, King Midas is granted a wish by...

"Between Walls" is a poem by American writer William Carlos Williams about shards of a glass bottle hidden in the back area of a hospital. First published in 1938, the work, like much of Williams's poetry, focuses on the depiction of scene and the...

“If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For Nought” is an 1850 sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in which a speaker begs her beloved to orient their feelings of love around permanent rather than fleeting features. Dismissing a series of attributes,...

Cat's Cradle, like many of Vonnegut's other novels, gets considerable mileage from irony and humor as it makes serious points about the state of the world and humanity. His tone is often light, but his words have a considerable bite. The novel is...

Set in an unnamed developing country, Andy Mulligan's Trash (2010) is a young-adult thriller novel about three boys whose lives change when they find in the garbage a bag linked to a murder and millions of stolen dollars. With corrupt police and...

"Education for Leisure" is a poem by the British writer Carol Ann Duffy, in which a delusional and violent speaker describes his plans to commit a murder. The work was originally published in Duffy's 1985 collection Standing Female Nude. Over the...

“War Photographer” initially appeared in Carol Ann Duffy’s first published collection of poetry, Standing Female Nude (1985). The poem depicts a photographer developing pictures he has taken in different war zones and reflecting on the pain and...

Beowulf is the first surviving epic written in the English language. The single existing copy of the manuscript dates from the late tenth century, although some scholars believe it dates from the first part of the eleventh century. It is found in...

Langston Hughes was an American poet and social activist, born and raised in Joplin, Mississippi. Langston Hughes was a prominent leader in the Harlem Renaissance, an artistic movement in the 1920s that consisted of new African-American cultural...

"The Widow's Lament in Springtime" is a poem by William Carlos Williams about a widow mourning the loss of her husband. It was published in 1921. Williams was largely noted for his importance in the Modernism and Imagism movements. He sought to...

"Little Red Cap" is a poem by Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, originally published in her 1999 collection The World's Wife. The poem describes a young girl's romance with a menacing wolf, who seduces her by appealing to her love of poetry. Based on...

"This Is Just to Say," first published in 1934, is a poem by American author William Carlos Williams about a man who has eaten someone else's plums. Williams was a major poet commonly noted for his involvement with the Imagism and Modernism...

“In Mrs Tilscher’s Class” is a poem written in the second-person voice, describing a student's nostalgic memory of a beloved teacher. It is the second poem in Carol Ann Duffy’s 1990 collection The Other Country. In the poem, an adult speaker...

"The Red Wheelbarrow" is a poem by William Carlos Williams that uses a uniquely contemplative voice to depict a wheelbarrow. It was published in 1923 as part of his collection, Spring and All. Williams was a significant twentieth-century American...

Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is Laila Lalami’s first novel, published in 2005.

Lalami had immigrated from Morocco and was working as a conceptual linguist in Los Angeles. She was “always hungry for news about Morocco,” and one day read about...

"Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" is a poem by American writer William Carlos Williams about the Pieter Bruegel the Elder painting of the same name. It was published in 1960 in the Hudson Review and subsequently collected in Williams's final...

A. S. Byatt's "The Thing in the Forest" is a short story about two girls who leave London to escape Nazi bombings only to encounter a miserable, worm-like creature in a rural English forest. Decades later, the women have difficulty processing the...

"This Is My Letter to the World" is a poem by American poet Emily Dickinson, dealing with themes of isolation, nature, and social judgment. It was written in 1862 and published in 1890. Dickinson's poetry was not widely known during her lifetime....

"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" is a highly acclaimed essay written by Laura Mulvey in 1973, originally published in the renowned British film theory journal Screen. To date, the essay can be found in many other collections and anthologies,...

"The Buck in the Snow" is a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay describing the death of a male deer in the woods. The poem was first published in 1928 in the collection The Buck in the Snow.

In the work, an unidentified speaker describes seeing two...