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.
"The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich" is a short story of Nikolai Gogol. It was Included in the stories collection "Mirgorod".
First it was published in the anthology of Smirdin "The Housewarming" (the 2nd part, 1834)....
Diary of a Madman is a short story written by Nikolai Gogol in 1834. The novel was published for the first time in the collected stories Arabesques with the title Shreds of Notes of a Madman in 1835. Later, it was included in the St. Petersburg...
"Nevsky Prospect" is the story of Nikolai Gogol, written in 1833-1834. "Nevsky Prospect" was first published in the collection "Arabesque" (1835), and was highly praised by critics. Gogol began working on the story during the creation of "Evenings...
Viy is a mystical novel written by Nikolai Gogol, first published in his stories collection "Mirgorod" in 1835. The name of the story is the name of the Slavic demonic male creature with which the plot is associated.
In a footnote to the book,...
Prose series "Tales of Belkin" was written by Pushkin during the famous "Boldin Autumn" in 1830 and then published anonymously. These series consist of a preface ("From the Publisher") and five novels: "The Shot", "The Blizzard", "The Undertaker",...
"A Man Called Horse" is a short story by Dorothy M. Johnson, published in Collier's magazine in 1950. It was later published again in 1968 in her book called Indian Country. The short story revolves around a Boston aristocrat who is captured by a...
"Ship of Fools" is the only novel of the American writer Katherine Anne Porter, published in 1962.
The idea of the novel was born during her voyage from Mexico to Europe in 1931. To the work on a book Porter launched ten years later and had been...
“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” is an excellent introduction into the literary technique known as “stream of consciousness” for the uninitiated. Stream of consciousness is a device by which the writer provides not just a description of the...
Children of the River was written by Linda Crew, a children and young adult author. This novel was originally published during 1989 and was published again during 1991 by Laurel Leaf. It tells the story of a young girl named Sundara fleeing...
Decoded is a 2010 memoir and autobiography of rapper and business mogul Shawn Carter, although he is best known by his stage name:Jay Z.
In the book, Carter combines personal experiences and his own lyrics with hisideas about the interconnectibity...
What makes King Horn worth studying? A little thing academicians like to term literary history. King Horn has for some time and likely will continue for an indefinite period to enjoy the status of being the earliest extant example of romantic...
Richard Dawkins is an accomplished scientist and a fellow at Oxford. His accomplishments include his activity as a vocal atheist, considered within the New Atheist movement through which he hopes to weaken the effects of religious belief on the...
Where the Heart Is is a novel written by Billie Letts, an American novelist and educator, and published in 1995. The novel reveals a story of Novalee Nation, a poor seventeen-year-old girl, who is pregnant. Her mother had abandoned her at the age...
“The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs” was written by William Morris and is actually a tragic epic poem. It was published in 1876 and is based on the Volsunga Saga. The most important character is Sigmund, who is a Norse...
The Arabian Nights, also called One Thousand and One Nights, is a collection of stories and folk tales from West and South Asia that was compiled during the Islamic Golden Age. It took centuries to collect all of these together, and various...
James and the Giant Peach was written in 1961 and was well received by the public. Originally titled James and the Giant Cherry, the book was given a new name because Dahl deemed a peach to be "prettier, bigger and squishier than a cherry." The...
Wilfred Owen does not have a particularly large body of verse, but many of his poems are considered among the best war poetry ever written in the English language. He is often compared to Keats and Shelley, and was influenced by Tennyson and...
Matthew Arnold is sometimes called the third great Victorian poet, after Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning.
Today, Matthew Arnold is remembered mostly for his critical essays; he did, however, write a lot of poetry during his career,...
The Heart of the Matter (1948) is one of Graham Greene's most famous novels. Critics consider it to be part of Greene's "Catholic Triology" alongside The Power and the Glory (1940) and The End of the Affair (1951). The Heart of the Matter has...
Chinua Achebe penned "Civil Peace" in 1971, depicting through it the effects of the Nigerian Civil War on a man and his family. The War, which began in 1967 with the secession of several Southeastern provinces from Nigeria, led to an intensive...
Though Vonnegut is now known primarily as a novelist, his short stories were quite popular during the 1950s and 60's, in leading magazines such as Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post.
Vonnegut began writing short fiction while working in...
The Left Hand of Darkness is a science fiction novel written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published in 1969. After its publication, the novel attained great popularity, and it was just a year later that it was rewarded as the year’s Best Novel in Hugo...
"Everything line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democraticsocialism, as I understand it."
So spoke George Orwell, in one of his better known essays, Why I Write...
Arthur Schnitzler is perhaps best known for his novel Dream Story because that novel was adapted into the final film made by Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut. The dreamlike, ambiguous stream-of-consciousness feel to that film in which certain...