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Richard II was first printed in 1597 in a good quality text most likely taken from Shakespeare's manuscript. Two reprints in 1598 mention Shakespeare as the author. Later prints in 1608 and 1615 appear to be taken from the earlier versions, but...

As part of his 1605 commission to produce an entertainment for the Twelfth Night celebration, Ben Jonson, working in close collaboration with noted architect Inigo Jones as the scenic designer, produced the Masque of Blackness. King James I...

Much Ado About Nothing was first published in 1600 and was likely written in 1598. The 1600 printing was the only copy published during Shakespeare's lifetime, and bears the title inscription describing that the play "hath been sundrie times...

Bartholomew Fair was first performed on October 31, 1614 by the company Lady Elizabeth's Men. It is a Jacobean comedy and is generally considered one of Jonson's four famous comedies – among The Alchemist, Epicoene, and Volpone. Of these plays, ...

How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water is a novel by Angie Cruz, first published in 2022. Set in the New York City neighborhood of Washington Heights, it tells the story of a middle-aged Dominican woman named Cara Romero.

The novel follows Cara...

The first performance of Measure for Measure is believed to have taken place in 1604, during the reign of King James I. By this time, Shakespeare is believed to have begun writing his plays for performance at the Blackfriars theatre, a small,...

As You Like It was likely written between 1598 and 1600. It was entered in the Stationers' Register on August 4, 1600 but no edition followed the entry, thereby leading to the ambiguity in its publication date. Two topical references have been...

V.S. Naipaul is one of the best-known Carribean writers ever. His work, which focuses on the human condition, has been widely-read and is still in print today. One of Naipual's most acclaimed novels is A Bend in the River, published in 1979 and...

"homage to my hips" is a work by the twentieth-century American poet Lucille Clifton. Originally published in her 1980 collection Two-Headed Woman, the poem uses the symbol of its speaker's hips to explore the experience of Black womanhood. The...

Dead Souls is a novel by celebrated Russian author Nikolai Gogol. First published in 1842, it details the quest of a bureaucrat named Chichikov to purchase the names of deceased serfs in a scheming effort to acquire land and wealth. Gogol claimed...

Harold Pinter's The Room is a tragicomic play about an anxious woman whose humble life is disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious messenger whose presence portends death. Written in 1957, The Room was Pinter's first play.

Living in a single-room...

"First Death in Nova Scotia" is one of the best-known works by the twentieth-century American poet Elizabeth Bishop. First appearing in The New Yorker in 1962, and then in the 1965 collection Questions of Travel, this work explores themes of death...

Warriors Don't Cry is a nonfiction memoir published by Melba Pattillo Beals in 1994. The book is set in the 1950s and 1960s, using entries from Beals' diary to recount her experiences as part of the Little Rock Nine, a group of nine African...

Although Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps better known for his Gothic short stories (such as "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Fall of the House of Usher") than for his poetry, a number of his poetic works have gained popularity in the popular...

In Wild (2012), Cheryl Strayed wrote one of the most financially successful memoirs ever. Strayed published another book in 2012 called Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of self-help essays she wrote anonymously on the website of The Rumpus, a...

Set in 1937 and starring Jack Nicholson, Roman Polanski's neo-noir film Chinatown (1974) is about a private investigator who uncovers a conspiracy involving corrupt management of the Los Angeles water supply. The film was inspired by a series of...

The Jew of Malta was composed around 1590, shortly after the death of the Duke of Guise in 1588, to which the prologue alludes. Its first recorded performance took place on February 26, 1592, by the Lord Strange's Men. Another followed on March 10...

Emily Dickinson, the renowned American poet, is widely celebrated as one of the most important literary figures of all time. Among her many masterpieces is "A Murmur in the Trees—to note—," a poem likely written in 1862, but not published until...

Claude McKay published his poem “The White House” in 1922. It appeared alongside three other poems in a collection titled “Spring Sonnets,” published in The Liberator, an American communist magazine. The poem utilizes the sonnet form which,...

"Beach Burial" is a poem by Kenneth Slessor that details a scene from a World War II battle in Egypt that Slessor witnessed in 1942. Slessor worked as a war correspondent during World War II, which offered him an opportunity to see the world...

It would be fair to say that American author Ann Napolitano is one of the most widely read and important authors of her time. Hello Beautiful, Napolitano's fourth novel inspired by Little Women and first published in 2023, cements her legacy as...

Shame is a novel written by author Salman Rushdie, first published in 1983. Set in the fictional town of Q. in the imaginary country "Peccavistan"—based on Quetta, in Pakistan—the book follows the intersection of various lives during a turbulent...

The Mysterious Benedict Society, which was published in 2007, is the first novel in author Trenton Lee Stewart's quartet of children's novels called "The Mysterious Benedict Society." The Mysterious Benedict Society (2007) follows four children...

English author Philip Reeve began his career as an illustrator, something which is reflected in his writing style. Unlike some other writers, Reeve doesn't plan before he writes. Instead, he starts writing with an opening and closing image in...