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Chrétien de Troyes’s romance, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart (Le Chevalier de la Charrette in French), was written in the late 12th century, sometime after Louis VII’s daughter Marie became the Countess Marie de Champagne through her 1164...

Persepolis was originally published in France where it won several awards and wide acclaim. In 2003, the novel was published by Random House in the United States. Persepolis is a graphic novel which tells the story of its author and her childhood...

For the uninitiated, Frederick Ogden Nash—or just plain ol’ Ogden Nash as most of his many fans refer to him—could in some ways be considered the psychic twin brother of the other mother that gave birth to Dr. Seuss. The poetry of Nash relies far...

The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen are distinct from those compiled by the Brothers Grimm. Not due to their content so much as their provenance. A little known fact among those who are familiar with the stories of little mermaids and ugly...

The Ebb-Tide was written by noted author Robert Louis Stevenson in collaboration with Lloyd Osbourne, his stepson. The novel would be published the very same year that Stevenson died, 1894. Had Stevenson lived, it is questionable whether his...

Ngugi wa Thiong'o wrote Weep Not, Child while studying at at Leeds University in England in 1962. Weep Not, Child was the second novel Ngugi wrote, although it was published before his first, The River Between. It follows the tragic story of...

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a children’s novel written by the American writer and illustrator Grace Lin. The novel was published in 2008 and was received extremely well by the public. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is the first book...

A Wind in the Door is a fantasy novel in the Time Quintet series by Madeleine L'Engle. It was published on January 1st, 1973, by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. It is a companion book to L'Engle's 1963 novel, A Wrinkle in Time. It is followed by its...

One of the first indications that William Cullen Bryant would become an American poet to be reckoned with occurred when Bryant was barely into his teenage years. “The Embargo” was not just a work of verse that revealed the early promise of a young...

Closer is the second play by Patrick Marber. It first premiered in 1997 in London at the Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre. The play is centrally about truth, and Marber blends modern and post-modern styles in order to keep the audience...

Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road" is a portrait of a failing marriage in the confines of 1950's surburbia. Dealing with themes of love, hate, conformity and madness, it is a realisitc and harrowing novel that drives home issues of identity and...

The Red Badge of Courage, a coming-of-age tale set in an unnamed battle of the Civil War (most likely the Battle of Chancellorsville), is Stephen Crane's most famous novel. Serialized in 1894 and published in 1895 when he was only 23, the novel is...

The Antichrist, by Friedrich Nietzsche, is a seminal work published in 1895 which challenged established religious and moral norms. Nietzsche aimed to deconstruct religious dogmas, particularly those of Christianity, during a time when designating...

Mythology is perhaps the most highly acclaimed modern collection of Greek and Roman (and even some Norse) myths. Written by Edith Hamilton in 1942, the collection draws on classical and other ancient sources to retell a wide variety of tales. In...

A poet and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou published a number of autobiographies, essay collections, and poetry collections. It is due to her unique ability to reach out to a large subset of Americans with her poetry and prose that she won...

Exeter Book, or the Codex Exoniensis, is a 10th Century book, or codex, that contains most of the surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry. Only four collections of Old English verse exist, out of which the Exeter Book is the largest and most impressive....

We The Living is the first novel by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand. It is the story of life in post-revolutionary Russia and was her first public statement against communism. In the foreword of the book Rand observes that We The Living is the...

As a young damsel, Anne Kingsmill was one of the ladies-in-waiting at the court of King Charles II. She served as maid of honor at the marriage of Mary of Modena to the Duke of York. Later, the Duke of York would become better known to history as...

Middlesex, published in 2002 by Jeffrey Eugenides, is the story of Cal Stephanides, an intersex person born in 1960 to a Greek-American family living in a wealthy suburb of Detroit. Thanks to a recessive gene passed down by his inbred family, Cal...

The Master Butcher's Singing Club was written in 2003 by Louise Erdirch, a native American writer. It revolves around German American traditions and culture, which is part of Erdrich's personal heritage.

The book follows the lives of Fidelis...

Let the Great World Spin was written by Colum McCann and published in 2009 by Random House. Its inception occurred shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, in which the Twin Towers of New York City's World Trade Center were destroyed....

Surviving is Chuck Palahniuk’s second novel, first published in February 1999.

This describes the history of Tender Branson, who sits in the pilot’s cabin and tells the story of his life to the black box. He describes the events of his life before...

Written by the Australian author Bryce Courtenay in 1989, The Power of One became a huge success, being translated into 18 languages, selling more than eight million copies, and transforming into a Hollywood film. It is categorized as a...

My Side of the Mountain was written in 1959 by Jean Craighead George. It is a heartwarming story about a boy, Sam Gribley, who is fed up with city life and decides to run away to live in the Catskill Mountains with only forty dollars, a penknife,...