Understand The Waste Land by Eliot
“The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot can be a difficult poem. Here are some resources to help you understand it, starting with a video introduction by Dr. Timothy Bartel: The notes that follow...
Category: English 4: British Literature
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot
THE WASTE LAND By T. S. Eliot Contents I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD II. A GAME OF CHESS III. THE FIRE SERMON IV. DEATH BY WATER V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID “Nam Sibyllam...
Alfred Lord Tennyson Biography, 1911
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), English poet, was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, on the 6th of August 1809. He was the fourth of the twelve children of the Reverend George Clayton Tennyson (1778–1831) and...
Charlotte Mason Biography
Charlotte Maria Shaw Mason (1 January 1842 – 16 January 1923) was a British educator and reformer in England at the turn of the twentieth century. She proposed to base the education of children upon a wide...
Rudyard Kipling Biography
Rudyard Kipling, whose full name was Joseph Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936), was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much...
Alexander Pope Biography
ALEXANDER POPE (1688–1744), English poet, was born in Lombard Street, London, on the 21st of May 1688. His father, Alexander Pope, a Roman Catholic, was a linen-draper who afterwards retired from business with a...
Virginia Woolf Biography
Brief Biography: Adeline Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941) was an English writer. She is considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of...
How to Read Ash Wednesday by Eliot
“Ash Wednesday” is a poem by T. S. Eliot, first published in 1930. Listen to the author reading his own poem: Dr. Bartel helps us understand this complex work: “Ash Wednesday” is a...
Mary Shelley Poetry
Stanzas by Mary Shelley Oh, come to me in dreams, my love! I will not ask a dearer bliss; Come with the starry beams, my love, And press mine eyelids with thy kiss. ’Twas...
Leigh Hunt Biography
JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT (1784–1859), English essayist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Southgate, Middlesex, on the 19th of October 1784. His father, the son of a West Indian clergyman, had settled as a...
Ring Out Wild Bells
From “In Memoriam” by Alfred Lord Tennyson Ring Out, Wild Bells Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out,...
The Renaissance
by John Addington Symonds The Renaissance RENAISSANCE—The “Renaissance” or “Renascence” is a term used to indicate a well-known but indefinite space of time and a certain phase in the development of Europe. On the...
To a Little Invisible Being by Anna Laetitia Barbauld
In this lovely poem by English poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld, an expectant mother speaks to her unborn baby, that “little invisible being” soon expected. To a Little Invisible Being Who is Expected Soon to Become...
Epistle to William Wilberforce by Anna Letitia Barbauld
Poem by Mrs. Anna Letitia Barbauld, 1743-1825. London: Printed for J. Johnson, No. 72, St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1791. Epistle To William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade...
Lorraine Murphy on Austen and other literature
Dr. Lorraine Murphy has studied Jane Austen’s works extensively and teaches about them online and in person. You can learn from her insights at the links which follow. “‘At its heart, Pride and Prejudice...
Ovid to his Wife by Anna Laetitia Barbauld
In this imaginative farewell poem from Roman poet Ovid to his wife, English poet Anna Laetitia Barbauld writes of aging. OVID to his WIFE: Imitated from different Parts of his Tristia. Jam mea cygneas...
Dorothy Wordsworth Poetry
He Said He Had Been a Soldier by Dorothy Wordsworth He said he had been a soldier, That his wife and children Had died in Jamaica. He had a begger’s wallet over his shoulders,...
The Revenge by Tennyson
The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet by Alfred, Lord Tennyson At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay, And a pinnace, like a flutter’d bird, came flying from far away. ‘Spanish ships...
The Reticence of Lady Anne by Saki
The Reticence of Lady Anne By Saki (aka H. H. Munro) Egbert came into the large, dimly lit drawing-room with the air of a man who is not certain whether he is entering a...
King Arthur Legends
Hetta Howes tracks the many appearances of King Arthur, from a 9th-century history to a Hollywood blockbuster, via the works of Chrétien de Troyes, Thomas Malory and the author of Sir Gawain and the...
Chaucer Biography
GEOFFREY CHAUCER (? 1340–1400), English poet, is most famous for his great work “The Canterbury Tales.” His own age delighted in stories, and he gave it the stories it demanded invested with a humanity,...
William Shakespeare Biography
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616), English poet, player and playwright, was baptized in the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire on the 26th of April 1564. The exact date of his birth is not known. Birth...
Lewis Carroll Biography
Best known by his pseudonym Lewis Carroll, the author and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodson (1832–1898), was born at Daresbury, near Warrington, in England on the 27th of January 1832. He was the eldest son...
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...
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...
The Other Side of the Hedge
In “The Other Side of the Hedge,” English author E. M. Forster seems to take a critical look at the modern quest to make progress without bothering to experience life. The Other Side 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 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,...
Shakespeare Resources
Why do William Shakespeare’s plays still touch us today? This Renaissance playwright, poet, and actor had a unique way with words and a timeless grasp of human nature. His works are considered to be...
