Kew Gardens by Virginia Woolf
Kew Gardens (1921) by Virginia Woolf FROM THE OVAL-SHAPED flower-bed there rose perhaps a hundred stalks spreading into heart-shaped or tongue-shaped leaves half way up and unfurling at the tip red or blue or...
Category: Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
Francis Thompson Biography
FRANCIS THOMPSON (1859–1907), poet and prose-writer, was born on 18 Dec. 1859 at 7 Winckley Street, in Preston, England. His father, Charles Thompson (1824–1896), a native of Oakham, Rutland, practiced homoeopathy at Preston and...
John Ruskin Biography
John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic, and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as architecture, literature, education, myth, ornithology, botany, geology, and political...
September Poems
One of my favorite September poems is a story by Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier. Barbara Frietchie by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) Up from the meadows rich with corn, Clear in the cool September...
William Cullen Bryant Biography
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT (1794-1878), American poet and journalist, was born at Cummington, a farming village in the Hampshire hills of western Massachusetts, on the 3rd of November 1794. He was the second son of...
Christopher Marlowe Biography
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564–1593), English dramatist, the father of English tragedy, and [the establisher] of dramatic blank verse, the eldest son of a shoemaker at Canterbury, was born in that city on the 6th of...
John Greenleaf Whittier Biography
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), America’s “Quaker poet” of freedom, faith and the sentiment of the common people, was born in a Merrimack Valley farmhouse, Haverhill, Massachusetts, on the 17th of December 1807. Family Ancestry &...
Miguel de Cervantes Biography
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (1547-1616), Spanish novelist (Don Quixote and others), playwright, and poet was born at Alcalá de Henares in 1547. The attempts of biographers to provide him with an illustrious genealogy are...
Turgenev and Tchaikovsky
In this brief article, scholar, editor, and translator Luis Sundkvist explores the life of noted Russian author Ivan Turgenev and considers ways in which his life and work intersected with the Russian composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Biography...
Marianne Moore Poetry
Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. She won several awards for her poetry in her lifetime, and her poems are frequently anthologized. Poetry (1919) by Marianne...
Leo Tolstoy Biography
Leo Tolstoy (or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy), 1828-1910, was a Russian novelist and social reformer, born on the 9th of September (August 28) 1828, in the home of his fathers – Yasnaya Polyana, near Toula...
Fyodor Dostoevsky Biography
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821–1881), Russian author, born at Moscow, on the 30th of October 1821, was the second son of a retired military surgeon of a decayed noble family. He was educated at Moscow...
Alexander Pushkin Biography
Alexander (or Aleksándr) Sergeyvich Pushkin (1799—1837) was a Russian poet born in Moscow, on the 7th of June 1799. He belonged to an ancient family of boyars; his maternal great-grandfather, a favourite negro ennobled by Peter...
Ivan Turgenev Tribute by Henry James
WHEN the mortal remains of Ivan Turgenev were about to be transported from Paris for interment in his own country, a short commemorative service was held at the Gare du Nord. Ernest Renan and...
Anton Chekhov Biography
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904), like Pushkin, Lermontov, Bielinski, and Garshin, died young, and although he wrote a goodly number of plays and stories which gave him a high reputation in Russia, he did not...
Bezhin Meadow by Ivan Turgenev
This short story by Ivan Turgenev is one chapter from his first major work, a gathering of observations and stories from his travels through Russia. This chapter is excerpted from A Sportsman’s Sketches, which was...
Dante Biography
Dante (or Durante) Alighieri (1265-1321), the greatest of Italian poets, was born at Florence about the middle of May 1265. He was descended from an ancient family, but from one which at any rate...
Roman Poetry
The earliest Roman poetry (actually Latin poetry) dates back to the second century B. C. It is often understood as an adaptation of models originally designed by the Greeks. One of the most spectacular and...
John Milton Biography
John Milton (1608–1674), author of Paradise Lost and other works, was an English poet. He was born in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, on the 9th of December 1608. Milton’s Parents and Early Life His father,...
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (gaol is the British spelling of jail) narrates the story of an execution that occurred while Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in the late 1890s. It does not attempt to...
Robert Burns Poetry
Robert Burns (1759 – 1796), a Scottish poet and lyricist is not only the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, but he has long been considered the national...
Sir Walter Scott Poetry
Much of Sir Walter Scott’s poetry reflects the stories and themes of courage, justice, and romance found in his novels. Here are three of his shorter poems, “Lochinvar,” “Breathes There the Man,” and “Old...
Slavery in Massachusetts by Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was a passionate abolitionist, and in this heartfelt speech he encourages his state to “dissolve her union with the slaveholder . . . and each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union...
On the Art of Fiction by Willa Cather
In her 1908 work, A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays, author Willa Cather (1873 – 1947) offers young writers some sage advice. On the Art of Fiction One is sometimes asked about the “obstacles”...
Alexandre Dumas biography
Alexandre Dumas, also known as Alexandre Dumas père, was a French author and playwright, best known for his historical adventure fiction. As one of France’s most widely read authors, his works have been translated into dozens...
A Poison Tree by William Blake
“A Poison Tree,” which explores the dangers of anger and revenge, was first published in Blake’s Songs of Experience in 1794. It has been set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his Ten Blake...
Jonathan Swift Poetry
Jonathan Swift (1667 – 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and Anglican cleric best remembered in the literary world for his satirical novel, Gulliver’s Travels. As a writer, he developed close,...
The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets
Outline of American Literature: Chapter 4 The Romantic Period, 1820-1860: Essayists and Poets By Kathryn VanSpanckeren TRANSCENDENTALISM Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) Walt Whitman (1819-1892) THE BRAHMIN POETS Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)...
William Cowper Biography
William Cowper (1731–1800), an English poet, was born in the rectory (now rebuilt) of Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, on the 26th of November (O.S. 15th) 1731, his father the Rev. John Cowper being rector of...
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