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.
Stevie Smith was a British poet and author of three novels, including Novel on Yellow Paper. She was born in 1902 in Northeastern England. Her parents divorced when she was young, and as a result she lived with several extended family members....
“The Loaded Dog” was published in 1901 in Henry Lawson’s short story collection titled Joe Wilson and His Mates. Since publication, the story has continued to be one of the most popular of Lawson’s short stories due to the tale’s universally...
Beetlejuice was one of Tim Burton’s first full-length movies, and established him as an unusual, singular, outrageous, and exciting director. The first screenplay for the film was written by Michael McDowell, and was apparently much darker than...
The Dumb Waiter is a one-act play written by English playwright Harold Pinter in 1957. The short play is set in a single basement room. There are only two characters: Gus and Ben, hitmen waiting for a target to arrive.
The play has elements of...
"The Library of Babel" is a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges. The story was originally published in Borges' 1941 collection El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, translated as The Garden of Forking Paths. It was later also included in the...
An early Hitchcock film, Rope is not among the Master of Suspense's best known films, but it is certainly notable, and includes many Hitchcockian innovations of horror and suspense. Rope is perhaps most memorable as a notable experimentation in...
Trainspotting is a British black comedy by Danny Boyle, released in 1996. It starred Ewan McGregor, Johnny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, Kevin McKidd, and Kelly Macdonald, in an ensemble cast led by McGregor’s protagonist, Mark Renton....
Marilyn is a book written by Filipino-American author Amanda Ngoho Reavey. It is her first novel, centering around the immigrant and Asian-American identity.
Reavey's creation is a multi-media project with poetry, photographs, visual media, and...
"The Scrutiny" or "The Scrutinie", in its older English form, is a poem written by the English poet Richard Lovelace. The year of publication of this particular poem is unknown, but Richard Lovelace wrote poems throughout his entire life, which...
“A Martian Sends a Postcard Home” is a poem written by Craig Raine, an English poet known for his work in Martian poetry. Raine studied at Oxford New College, serving as a professor there, and later becoming the editor of the Areté newspaper,...
This particular poem by Mary Wroth appears in her groundbreaking never-completed prose romance The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania which nevertheless was partially published in 1621. This massive work is universally recognized as the first prose...
Hilda Doolittle is known widely by her initials, H.D. “Sea Rose” is one of the poems belonging to Sea Garden (1916), a book of poems in which H.D. examines the themes of gender, sexuality, conformity, and value by using natural scenery as...
Hilda Doolittle—known professionally as H.D.—developed a fascination with Greek mythology early in her career, and was known for harnessing the legends of myth to make broader statements about culture and feminism. In 1923, during her transition...
“Sea Violet" is part of H.D.'s first collection, Sea Garden (1916), a book of poems in which she examines themes of gender, sexuality, conformity, and value through the metaphor and symbolism of flowers. Like "Sea Rose" and "Sea Lily," also from ...
The Death of Woman Wang is a book written by Jonathan Spence and published in 1979. It takes place in 17th century Northern China, in the province of T’an-ch’eng. The book was well-received by critics.
Spence's described events take place in a...
The Romance of the Shop is a novel penned in 1888 by Amy Levy. It is one of the first novels that illuminates the struggles of the New Women, one of the first Feminist movements that gained traction in the United States. The novel's protagonists...
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is an educational philosophical book written by Paulo Freire and translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. The book was first published in 1968 and was translated to English two years later. Paulo Freire is a Brazilian...
Top Gun is an iconic American action film, remembered for propelling Tom Cruise into the public eye and Hollywood stardom. While it did not fare that well with critics, it was a big hit at the box office and was lauded for its special effects and...
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia was declared in 2015 to be one of the top ten eating disorder books of all time. This memoir was beaten to the number one spot only by Clare Beeken's 2001 account of her journey from anorexia to compulsive...
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is widely considered one of the most ambitious and profoundly moving plays of the late 20th century, earning the 1993 Pulitzer Prize and a place in Harold Bloom’s Western canon (interestingly,...
The Royal Tenenbaums was written by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson and released in 2001 to great acclaim. His third film, The Royal Tenenbaums, follows the development of the three gifted but troubled Tenenbaum children, and their reunion with their...
Published in 1984, The Barracks Thief is a war novel written by the American author Tobias Wolff. Published shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, the novel takes place in the decade before its publication. Following not the story of one, but...
The Band's Visit is a stage musical written by David Yazbek, based on a book by Itamar Moses. The book was itself based on the Israeli film The Band's Visit. The musical first opened off Broadway before opening at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in...
Ray Russell is an American author born on September 4, 1924 in Chicago, Illinois. Despite Russell’s massive success in the literary world, he did not always work as a writer. After graduating high school, he served in the Air Force and...