Newton Booth Tarkington (1869—1946) was an American dramatist and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. Among only three other novelists to have won the Pulitzer Prize more than once, Tarkington was one of the greatest authors of the 1910s and 1920s who helped usher in Indiana's Golden Age of literature. In his 1914 work "Penrod", Tarkington presents a series of sketches that depict the adventures of an eleven-year-old boy called Penrod Schofield living...

John Mullan is professor of English at University College London and the author of How Novels Work. A broadcaster and journalist as well as an academic, he has been described as having "a scholar's knowledge worn with a journalist's lightness of touch." He writes a weekly column on contemporary fiction for the Guardian newspaper. Some of the greatest works in English literature were first published without their authors' names. Why did so many authors...

Designed to be compatible with virtually every standard textbook in its subject field, Barron's EZ-101 Study Keys gives you a valuable overview of your college-level course. From Middle English through the modern writers, English Literature covers the key themes, quotations, and literary terms.

A collection of both previously unpublished works and classic essays includes discussions of recent cultural and political events, social networking, libraries, and the failure to address global warming. "Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel, White Teeth, almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world's preeminent fiction writers, but also as a brilliant and singular essayist. She...

A comprehensive research and study guide for several novels by Charles Dickens, including plot summaries, thematic analyses, lists of characters, and critical views.

Nava Atlas presents twelve celebrated women authors and draws on their diaries, letters, memoirs, and interviews to show how they expressed their views on the subjects of importance to every writer, from carving out time to write, to conquering their inner demons, to developing a "voice," to balancing the demands of family life with needs to write. Atlas provides her own illuminating commentary as well and reveals how the lessons of classic women...

A collection of essays from the acclaimed author of Mrs. Dalloway on such subjects as Jane Austen, Geoffrey Chaucer, and her own literary philosophy. A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out. Not written for scholars or critics, these essays are a collection of Virginia Woolf's everyday thoughts about literature and the world-and the art of reading...

Includes a brief biography of William Shakespeare, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas.