Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold (1822–87)The most important British interpreter of the concept of ‘culture’ as a critique of vulgar democracy and overzealous evangelicism, Arnold was born at Laleham, near Staines, on...
View ArticleThe Sun Also Rises
The Sun Also RisesHemingway’s first novel is narrated, in radically understated style, by Jake Barnes, an American newspaper reporter in Paris in the early 1920s. A wound in World War I has left him...
View ArticleSister Carrie
Sister CarrieSister Carrie is a central text of the American naturalist movement, which sought to explore the reactions of the individual to larger-than-life forces, such as evolution, materialism, and...
View ArticleA Passage to India
A Passage to IndiaIn 1921 Forster acted as private secretary to the maharajah of the state of Dewas Senior in Central India for six months. It was during this trip that Forster wrote A Passage to...
View ArticleThe Shining
The ShiningAfter completing his second novel Salem’s Lot, Stephen King decided to move his family to Colorado for an extended holiday in the late summer of 1974. When they visited the Stanley Hotel in...
View ArticleThe Haunting of Hill House
The Haunting of Hill HouseShirley Jackson had already written two masterpieces of psychological horror, The Bird’s Nest (1954) and The Sundial (1954), when she took on what would become generally...
View ArticleThe Postman Always Rings Twice
The Postman Always Rings TwiceAmerican depression-era writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain crafted a type of hard-boiled, violent melodrama that represented a new fusion...
View ArticleRed Alert
Red AlertPeter George wrote Red Alert (U.K. title, Two Hours to Doom) during the escalation of Cold War paranoia in the late fifties. His own experiences in the RAF clearly influenced the writing of...
View ArticleThe Queen of Air and Darkness
The Queen of Air and Darkness by Poul Anderson (1971)In this story, the planet Roland has been settled for many years, but large portions of its interior have never been mapped let alone visited....
View ArticleKiss Me Deadly
Kiss Me DeadlyFrank Morrison “Mickey” Spillane had already established himself as a comic book and pulp writer (he helped develop the characters of Captain Marvel and Captain America) when he created...
View ArticlePorgy Novel
Porgy NovelThe novel Porgy (1925), by the white Charlestonian DuBose Heyward, was the first major southern novel to portray African Americans in an honest, straightforwardway, rather than hew to the...
View ArticleMolly Holden
Molly Holden (1927–1981)Molly Holden was born in London, the daughter of Conner Henry, a manager for the gas board, and Winifred Farrant Gilbert Henry. She graduated from Kings College, London, in 1948...
View ArticleLibrary of Alexandria
Library of AlexandriaLibrary of Alexandria is the most famous library of the ancient world, created by the command of the first Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt to preserve the light of Hellenic civilization...
View ArticleMarie Chauvet
Marie Chauvet (1916-1973) Marie Chauvet was a writer and playwright whose novel Amour, colère et folie places her alongside Jacques Roumain and Jacques Stéphen Alexis as one of Haiti’s most eminent...
View ArticleThe Age of Innocence
The Age of InnocenceSerialized in The Pictorial Review without chapter divisions, The Age of Innocence was significantly revised by Wharton, as was her habit, before its book publication by Appleton...
View ArticleBooth Tarkington
Booth TarkingtonAlice Adams won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1921. Along with his other masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons (1918), also a Pulitzer Prize winner, Booth Tarkington presented a...
View ArticleAdventures of Huckleberry Finn
Adventures of Huckleberry FinnSamuel Langhorne Clemens, who is best known by his pen name Mark Twain, started his writing career as a frontier humorist and ended it as a bitter satirist. The range of...
View ArticleBarry Lyndon
Barry LyndonFirst published in serial form as “The Luck of Barry Lyndon: A Romance of the Last Century,” Barry Lyndon was Thackeray’s first novel. It parodies the memoir genre by juxtaposing the...
View ArticleThe Andromeda Strain
The Andromeda StrainThe Andromeda Strain was the first novel Michael Crichton wrote under his own name, and its success influenced Crichton to make writing his career. Crichton takes great pains to...
View ArticleBabbitt
BabbittBabbitt is one novel in Lewis’s “Zenith trilogy,” comprised additionally of Main Street (1920) and Arrowsmith (1925). Lewis dedicated Babbitt to fellow novelist Edith Wharton with whom he shared...
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