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.
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...
Daphnis and Chloe is one of the few surviving examples of one of the most unusual genres of ancient literature: the Greek romance. The author is known only as Longus and is believed to have lived on the isle of Lesbos between the 2nd and 3rd...
It is entirely within the realm of possibility that without Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, the world would never have gotten to read Gayl Jones’ novel Corregidora. At least, not exactly in the same form that it takes as a result of a world in which...
Childhood and Society, written by Psychologist Erik Erikson entails what is considered to be one of the most important studies in child psychology. In this book, Erikson studied the social factors and experiences that shape the child’s...
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...
Cards On The Table is a detective novel written by Agatha Christie published in England in 1936, and published in the USA the following year. The novel "stars" one of Christie's two beloved sleuths, Hercule Poirot, renowned Belgian detective. Not...
Margery Kempe is a historic figure who lived in England between 1373 and 1438 and remained in history because of her writings and her religious beliefs. While Kempe was never formally made a saint by the Catholic Church she is named a Christian...
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...
Clay’s Ark is the last of five novels which comprise Octavia Butler’s Patternmaster series of science fiction tales. The series that commence in 1976 was brought to a close with a book which gestated and was born during a very difficult period for...
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...
"Clarissa, or The history of a young lady" is a novel written by Samuel Richardson in 4 parts in 1748. It was created in the genre of a family character-studying novel in the era of the Enlightenment Mature. This genre was at that time very common...
The novel 2001: A Space Odyssey was written by Arthur C. Clarke in the year 1968. The novel is the result of the collective effort of both Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick but only Clarke appears as the author of the book.
The novel is based...
Here’s a timed quiz for you: name a memorable African-American female character living in the post-Civil War era from American Literature published before the Civil Rights Movement that wasn’t either a mammy, a prostitute or an ill-fated jazz...
Ariel is the second full-length collection of poetry written by Sylvia Plath, published in 1965. The poems in Ariel were largely written in the weeks preceding Plath's infamous death by suicide in 1963 and explore the themes of despair, rebirth,...
Michelle Cliff, a Jamaican novelist, first released her book "Abeng" in 1984. The novel's examination of identity, colonialism, and personal history makes it a noteworthy piece of Caribbean literature.
"Abeng" by Michelle Cliff is a novel that...
Anticlaudianus was written by French theologian and poet Alain de Lille. This lengthy, symbolic poem is about creation as well as the edification of the human soul by God, nature, theology, and philosophy. Alain is also well-known for another poem...
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain is a collection of short stories written by Robert Olen Butler documenting the lives of Vietnamese immigrants in the United States of America. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993.
The stories...
Amerika is the first novel written by Franz Kafka, but remained incomplete until Kafka's death and was only published posthumously. The German book was released three years after Kafka's death in 1927 although the first English translation was not...
With the publication of her very first volume of verse simply titled Poems, Anna Letitia Barbauld became an overnight literary sensation whose influence would go on to strongly manifest itself through the poetry of the Romantic Period. Sadly, many...
The Metaphysic or Metaphysics is a canonical collection of various writings by Aristotle which were collected and featured in the order they now appear, although there are historical-critical debates about whether this was the originally intended...
Anagrams is the first novel by acclaimed short story writer Lorrie Moore. Published in 1986, the novel is attempt to transfer the concept of anagrammatic rearrangement from letters to characters. Moore has described the work as a “cubist novel”...
