Literature Basics

Matsuo Basho

(1644-1694), a pseudonym of Matsuo Munefusa: Generally acknowledged as the master of the haiku form, the most notable influences on his work were Zen Buddhism and his travels throughout Japan. He is noted for works like The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi), which includes descriptions of local sights in both prose and haiku. He took his pseudonym from the name of the simple hut where he retired: "his name"-an, which means "Cottage of the Plaintain Tree."

A Modest Proposal

(1729) is a satirical essay by Jonathan Swift. In the essay, Swift proposes alleviating the "burden" created by the children of the poor by using the children as food. Swift cites a conversation with "a very knowing American" who notes that "a young healthy child, well nursed, is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food." Swift continues this satire by offering advice involving the timing of availability (which would be greatest nine months after Lent), and notes that the flesh of children would be appropriate for landlords, since they "have already devoured most of the parents." Swift couches his actual suggestions for alleviating poverty—such as taxing absentees—in a list of ideas he has considered and rejected as impossible to implement.

Phillis Wheatley

(1753-1784)was born in Africa and brought to the United States as a slave in 1761; "last name" was her slave name. She was freed in the 1770s shortly after the release of her collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Her poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America" says that "mercy" brought her from her "Pagan land" and taught her "benighted soul" about God and Christian redemption. She praised George Washington in her poem "To His Excellency General Washington."

The Pickwick Papers

(1837) The London gentleman Samuel "name" , the president of his namesake "club," sets out with fellow members Nathaniel Winkle, Tracy Tupman, and Augustus Snodgrass on a series of coach journeys to sites in provincial England. While on their travels, the "name" foil the attempt of Alfred Jingle to elope with Rachael Wardle of Dingley Dell. "name" also befriends and employs the Cockney valet Sam Weller, who is known for grotesquely humorous sayings such as "out with it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farthing."

Oliver Twist

(1838) The orphan is brought up in a workhouse, where he horrifies the beadle Mr. Bumble by asking for more food. Oliver is then apprenticed to the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry. After fighting with the bully Noah Claypole, the orphan runs away to London. On the road he meets the pickpocket Jack Dawkins, known as the "Artful Dodger," who leads him to the den of the criminal Fagin. A kindly gentleman named Mr. Brownlow temporarily rescues the orphan, but he is returned to Fagin by the cruel Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. During an attempt to rob a house, the orphan is shot. He is tended by an occupant of the house named Rose Maylie, who eventually learns that the orphan is being plotted against by his villainous half-brother, Monks. The novel ends happily, as the orphan's chief enemies die or emigrate, and he is left in the care of Mr. Brownlow and Rose, who is revealed to be his aunt.

Nicholas Nickleby

(1839) After his father dies, the title character is sent to work at Dotheboys Hall by his cruel uncle Ralph. With the help of the disabled Smike, the title character beats the foul schoolmaster Wackford Squeers, and escapes to London. the title character's sister Kate works with the milliner Madame Mantalini, but must confront the attentions of the foppish Mr. Mantalini and Sir Mulberry Hawk. the title character finds employment in Portsmouth with the theater manager Vincent Crummles, then returns to London and works for the Cheeryble brothers. Smike dies, and Ralph commits suicide after learning that Smike was his son. the title character marries a woman named Madeline Bray, and Kate weds the Cheerybles' nephew, Frank.

The Old Curiosity Shop

(1841) Thirteen-year-old Nell Trent goes to live with her grandfather, a gambling addict who owns a London shop filled with mysterious and horrible objects. His gambling causes him to lose the shop to the evil dwarfish moneylender Daniel Quilp. Nell's older brother Frederick plots to marry her off to Dick Swiveller to get a share of a supposed treasure trove, but Dick eventually marries a servant girl nicknamed "the Marchioness" instead. A major subplot concerns Quilp's efforts to frame a boy named Kit Nubbles for theft. At the end of the novel, Quilp drowns, and Nell dies shortly before her grandfather also passes away.

A Christmas Carol

(1843) The cold-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley. Marley's ghost, who wears heavy chains made of cash boxes and other symbols of greed, tells Scrooge to expect the arrival of three spirits. During a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past, Scrooge is shown a holiday party given by his former employer Mr. Fezziwig, and is taken back to the moment when his fiancée Belle left him on account of his avarice. The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the homes of his nephew Fred and his clerk Bob Cratchit, whose son Tiny Tim is near death. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge the grave of an unloved man—Scrooge himself. Scrooge has a change of heart, celebrates Christmas, and becomes a benefactor to the Cratchit family, preventing Tiny Tim from dying.

David Copperfield

(1850) Dickens's favorite of his own books, and the most autobiographical. After the title character's father dies, his mother marries the cruel Mr. Murdstone. The title character is sent to a school where he is tormented by the headmaster Creakle, but finds comfort in his friendships with Tommy Traddles and James Steerforth. While working in London, the title character befriends the optimistic but indebted Mr. Micawber. Eventually, the title character escapes his grim warehouse job by walking to Dover. There, he finds his great-aunt Betsey Trotwood, who arranges for the title character to be educated by the lawyer Mr. Wickfield. The title character keeps in touch with his old nurse Clara Peggotty, whose relative "Little Em'ly" is seduced and abandoned by the title character's former friend Steerforth. Youthful infatuation causes the title character to wed the flighty Dora Spenlow, who eventually dies. After helping to extricate Mr. Wickfield from the schemes of the "humble" clerk Uriah Heep, the title character marries Mr. Wickfield's daughter Agnes. Throughout the story, the title character progresses in the literary world, ultimately becoming a successful novelist.

Bleak House

(1853) This novel revolves around the Chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which has dragged on for many years as family members fight over an inheritance. The title home (which is actually pleasant, rather than bleak) is owned by John Jarndyce, who cares for his young relatives Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Ada has a companion named Esther Summerson, who narrates much of the novel, and is Dickens's only female narrator. Esther suffers a severe illness after caring for a sick boy named Jo, and learns that she is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock. The lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn discovers Lady Dedlock's secret but is murdered by the maid Hortense, a crime that is investigated by Inspector Bucket. Lady Dedlock dies after fleeing home and the Chancery suit ends, as the disputed inheritance has been totally consumed by court costs. Other memorable characters in the novel include the merchant Krook, who dies of spontaneous human combustion; Mrs. Jellyby, who busies herself with charitable causes but neglects her own family, and Horace Skimpole, whose blithe irresponsibility burdens others.

José Martí

(1853-1895, Cuba): Best known as a poet and a revolutionary, he fought tirelessly for Cuban independence. Imprisoned at age sixteen and exiled from the island several times, he settled in New York for the last fifteen years of his life, where he wrote essays on Walt Whitman, Jesse James, and the threat of Latin American economic dependence on the United States. His Ill-Omened Friendship (1885) is considered the first Spanish modernist novel, and his poetry collections include Our America and Simple Verses, which contains the poem "Guantanamera," the inspiration for several songs. He was killed in a skirmish at Dos Ríos while participating in an invasion with other Cuban exiles.

Hard Times

(1854) Thomas Gradgrind is a fact-obsessed utilitarian from Coketown, in the north of England. He superintends a school whose students include an ambitious boy named Bitzer, and Sissy Jupe, a young member of Mr. Sleary's traveling circus. Mr. Gradgrind arranges for his daughter Louisa to marry Josiah Bounderby, an unpleasant older banker who employs Mr. Grandgrind's son, Tom. The politician James Harthouse tries to seduce Louisa, who returns home to her father and causes him to see the error of his ways. Tom Gradgrind steals from Mr. Bounderby, unsuccessfully tries to frame a worker named Stephen Blackpool, and flees to America.

A Tale of Two Cities

(1859) Paris and London are the title cities of this novel, which famously begins "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." At the start of the novel, the French doctor Alexandre Manette is released after 18 years in the Bastille, where he was imprisoned to prevent him from revealing the crimes of the Evrémonde family. Dr. Manette relocates to England with the help of his daughter Lucie and the Tellson's Bank employee Jarvis Lorry. Lucie marries Charles Darnay, a Frenchman who bears a striking resemblance to the English lawyer Sidney Carton. Darnay is also a member of the Evrémonde family. After returning to Paris during the French Revolution, Darnay is arrested as the result of a vendetta against the Evrémondes waged by the Defarges, a proletarian couple who encode information about their enemies into Madame Defarge's knitting. Carton expresses his love for Lucie by taking Darnay's place in jail, and goes to the guillotine thinking "it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done." Lucie and Darnay escape with the help of the governess Miss Pross, who shoots Madame Defarge.

Great Expectations

(1861) The narrator Philip Pirrip, who is nicknamed "Pip," is brought up by his sister and her kind husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. While visiting a churchyard, Pip meets the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, and renders him aid. Later, Pip is hired to "play" with a girl named Estella at Satis House, whose owner Miss Havisham was spurned on her wedding day and has worn a wedding dress ever since. When the lawyer Mr. Jaggers reveals that a mysterious benefactor will fund Pip's education, Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is making him a "gentleman" so that he can marry Estella. Instead, Estella marries the wealthy Bentley Drummle, who mistreats her. Pip discovers that his benefactor was actually the convict Magwitch, and tries to help Magwitch flee England with the help of Pip's friends Startop and Herbert Pocket. However, the escape is foiled by Compeyson, the man who jilted Miss Havisham. Pip's "name of the novel" are dashed, but he becomes a better person, and is finally reunited with the widowed Estella. Dickens modified the novel's conclusion at the suggestion of the author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who objected to an ending in which Estella weds another man.

Gabriela Mistral

(1889-1957, Chile, Nobel 1945): The first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, she was actually named Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, but took her pen name from the Italian and French poets Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric "name" respectively. At first a prominent educator, she wrote "Sonnets of Death" (1914) after the suicide of her fiancé. Those sonnets later appeared in her most famous collection, Desolation (1922). A native Chilean, she served as a diplomat both in the United States and Europe. Langston Hughes translated a portion of her poetry into English just after she died.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

(1890) is the only novel by Oscar Wilde. The title character is a handsome youth who has his portrait painted by his friend, the artist Basil Hallward. Under the influence of the hedonistic Lord Henry Wotton, The title character pursues a life of sin and pleasure. However, as time passes and The title character's life grows more and more perverse—he causes the suicide of the actress Sibyl Vane and murders Basil—The title character's portrait becomes older and more disfigured and ugly, while The title character himself remains eternally young and beautiful. At the end of the novel, The title characterstabs the portrait of himself; instantly, he dies and withers to a disfigured, decrepit corpse, while the picture returns to its original state.

Zora Neale Hurston

(1891-1960) set many of her works in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. Her best-known novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is about Janie Crawford, whose sexual awakening is compared to the blossoming of a pear tree. Janie successively marries Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, and Tea Cake; when Tea Cake attacks her after being bitten by a rabid dog during a hurricane, she shoots him. She was also a prominent anthropologist, collecting African-American folklore in books like Mules and Men. Her work was relatively unknown until 1975, when Alice Walker published the article "In Search of 'Her name'."

Dracula

(1897) is a novel by Bram Stoker that established many of the modern tropes regarding vampires. The title character is an epistolary novel, meaning its narrative is conveyed through documents such as diaries and letters written by the characters. Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor (attorney), goes to Transylvania to meet The title character , who wishes to purchase a house in London. Upon arriving in London, The title character attacks and eventually kills Lucy Westenra, a friend of Harker's fiancée Mina Murray. The title character turns his attention to Mina; however, Abraham Van Helsing recognizes the danger posed by the vampire. Van Helsing, Harker, and several acquaintances pursue the title character back to Transylvania, where they eventually kill him.

Kawabata Yasunari

(1899-1972): Recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature, he was the first Japanese author to win the Nobel. His works combine classic Japanese values with modern trends, and often center on the role of sex in people's lives. Many of his short stories are only a few pages long, a form given the name "palm-of-the-hand." He is best known for three novels: Thousand Cranes, based on the tea ceremony and inspired by The Tale of Genji; The Sound of the Mountain, about the relationship of an old man and his daughter-in-law; and Snow Country, about an aging geisha. A friend of Mishima Yukio, he was also associated with right-wing causes and openly protested the Cultural Revolution in China. He committed suicide two years after Mishima.

Miguel Asturias

(1899-1974, Guatemala, Nobel 1967): He left his native Guatemala in 1923 to study in Paris. There he discovered Mayan mythology, and translated the Popol Vuh into Spanish; the theme would pervade his work, such as 1963's Mulata de tal. He most famous novel, El señor presidente (1946), was a satire against the oppressive Guatalemalan dictatorship. He also completed a trilogy that blasted exploitation by the American-led United Fruit Company, and the short-story collection Weekend in Guatemala (1956), based on the CIA-led overthrow of president Jacobo Arbenz's liberal government.

Jorge Luis Borges

(1899-1986, Argentina): One-quarter English, He learned that language before he learned Spanish. Educated in Europe during World War I, he met a circle of avant-garde poets in Spain, which inspired him to found the ultraismo movement and publish the collection Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923) when he returned to Argentina. While working in a library, He developed his greatest short stories, collected in A Universal History of Infamy (1935), Ficciones (1944), and The Aleph (1949). By his fifties, a disorder inherited from his father had taken His eyesight, but in 1962 he completed the influential story collection Labyrinths.

Langston Hughes

(1901-1967) was a leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance. His poems "I, Too" and "Let America Be America Again" address America's racist history and the feelings of exclusion it causes. His poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" invokes world rivers like the Euphrates and the Congo and repeats the line "My soul has grown deep like the rivers," while his poem "The Weary Blues" describes a blues performance on Lenox Avenue in Harlem. He also wrote the poem "Harlem," which asks "What happens to a dream deferred?" and which inspired the title of Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.

Pablo Neruda

(1904-1973, Chile, Nobel 1971): Born Neftali Reyes, he adopted the surname of the 19th-century Czech poet Jan "name". Gabriela Mistral was the head of his school in the small city Temuco. In 1923 his best-known work, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, was published, which led to diplomatic appointments. As a penniless consul in Burma in the 1930s, he wrote the surrealist collection Residence on Earth. He served in the Chilean senate in the 1940s, though government opponents forced him into exile over his Communist views. Crossing the Andes on horseback inspired his epic Canto general (1950). He died of cancer days after his friend Salvador Allende was deposed.

The Playboy of the Western World

(1907) is a play by John Millington Synge. A young man named Christy Mahon enters a tavern in western Ireland, claiming that he is wanted for murdering his father. Christy's tale, and the allure of his deeds, prompt the residents of the town—including Pegeen, the daughter of the tavern's owner—to become infatuated with him. Eventually, Christy's father shows up looking for him, revealing Christy's story to have been a lie; Christy tries to maintain his image by attacking his father, but once again his father survives, and Christy leaves town with his father, much to Pegeen's dismay. The play's premiere at the Abbey Theater led to a riot caused by people who felt the play promoted a poor moral message.

Richard Wright

(1908-1960) wrote the 1940 bestseller Native Son. The protagonist of that novel, Bigger Thomas, gets a job as a chauffeur for Mary Dalton, but he suffocates her with a pillow for fear of being discovered in bed with her. Bigger later rapes and murders his girlfriend Bessie, and is ultimately sentenced to death for the murders. His memoir Black Boy describes his youth in the Jim Crow South and his move to Chicago, where he joins and then becomes disillusioned with the Communist Party. He also wrote Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of novellas including "Big Boy Leaves Home" and "Fire and Cloud."

Octavio Paz

(1914-1998, Mexico, Nobel 1990): A prominent poet and essayist, he supported leftist causes in Mexico; he fought briefly for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. He published the poetry collection Luna silvestre at age 19, and his 584-line poem The Sun Stone deals with the planet Venus, an important symbol to the Aztecs. While studying in Los Angeles, he observed flamboyantly-dressed Mexican-American pachucos ("zoot-suiters"), who inspired him to write about Mexico and its Native American/mestizo heritage in his pivotal essay collection The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). Another prose work, In the Light of India (1997), reflected his part-(East) Indian heritage.

Gwendolyn Brooks

(1917-2000) became the first African-American person to win a Pulitzer in 1950 for her poetry collection Annie Allen. Many of her works reflect her experiences in Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side that became a center of African-American life during the Great Migration. Her best-known poem, "We Real Cool," is set at the Golden Shovel and consists of three-word sentences starting with "We," such as "We / Lurk late" and "We / Jazz June." Though primarily a poet, she also wrote the novel Maud Martha.

Ralph Ellison

(1919-1994) is best known for his novel Invisible Man, whose unnamed narrator earns a college scholarship by participating in a degrading Battle Royal; after being kicked out of college and working at the Liberty Paint company (known for its pure white paint), he joins a political group called the Brotherhood. At the climax of the novel, the narrator is nearly lynched by a Black nationalist named Ras the Destroyer during riots in Harlem. His unfinished second novel was published posthumously in a long version called Three Days Before the Shooting... and a short version called Juneteenth.

James Baldwin

(1924-1987) grew up in Harlem, which he portrayed in his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. That novel is about the teenage John Grimes and his fanatically religious stepfather Gabriel. In his novel Giovanni's Room, an American named David has an affair with the title Italian bartender. His novel If Beale Street Could Talk, about the love between Tish and a man named Fonny who has been falsely accused of rape, was made into a 2018 movie directed by Barry Jenkins. He also wrote several essays, including an examination of race and religion in The Fire Next Time. His essay collection Notes of a Native Son begins with "Everybody's Protest Novel," which is critical of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Native Son.

Mishima Yukio

(1925-1970), a pseudonym of Hiraoka Kimitake: He was a novelist whose central theme was the disparity between traditional Japanese values and the spiritual emptiness of modern life. He failed to qualify for military service during World War II, so worked in an aircraft factory instead. His first novel, Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no kokuhaku), was successful enough to allow him to write full-time. His four-volume epic The Sea of Fertility (Hojo no umi, consisting of Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel), is about self-destructive personalities and the transformation of Japan into a modern, but sterile, society. He organized the Tate no kai — a right-wing society stressing physical fitness and the martial arts — committed ritual suicide after a public speech failed to galvanize the armed forces into overthrowing the government.

Carlos Fuentes

(1928-2012, Mexico): Though born into a well-to-do family, He often dealt with the betrayed ideals from the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the subject of both his first novel, Where the Air is Clear (1958), and his most successful book, The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962). Other notable novels include Terra nostra, set during the reign of King Philip II of Spain, and The Old Gringo, which portrays Ambrose Bierce's last days in Mexico. He also wrote absurdist plays and essay collections on Mexican and American art and literature.

Gabriel García Marquez

(1928-2014, Colombia, Nobel Prize for Literature 1982): The master of magic realism, his birthplace, Aracataca was the model for the fictional town Macondo. The town played a prominent role in many of his works, such as Leaf Storm and his seminal novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which details the decline of the Buendía family over seven generations. A newspaper journalist in the 1950s, He exposed a naval scandal (chronicled in The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor). Other prominent novels include In Evil Hour, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The General in His Labyrinth, a depiction of Simón Bolívar's final years.

Lorraine Hansberry

(1930-1965) best known for her play A Raisin in the Sun. That play is about the Younger family, who debate how to use $10,000 in life insurance money. Walter wants to invest the money in a liquor store, while his mother Mama wants to buy a house in the white neighborhood Clybourne Park. Mama's daughter Beneatha wants to spend the money on medical school and, unlike the other members of the family, explores her African heritage. Her other works include the play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window and the autobiography To Be Young, Gifted and Black.

Toni Morrison

(1931-2019) was the first Black woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature and won a Pulitzer for her novel Beloved. Beloved is about Sethe, a slave who escaped from Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky to 124 Bluestone Road in Cincinnati. Sethe is haunted by the ghost of Beloved, a daughter she killed to prevent her from being returned to slavery. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, is about Pecola Breedlove, a Black foster child who considers herself ugly and wishes she had blue eyes. Her other acclaimed novels include Song of Solomon, about the life of Macon Dead III, who is nicknamed "Milkman" because he is breastfed by his mother for a long time.

Mario Vargas Llosa

(1936-present, Peru): While attending military school in Lima, He wrote the play The Escape of the Inca (1952), but the harsh treatment he received there was the basis for his novel The Time of the Hero. Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) was His serious take on living under the dictatorship of Manuel Odría, while in 1977 he published the lighter, autobiographical Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, about soap operas. Other important works include The War of the End of the World and A Fish in the Water, which discusses his political career; He ran for president of Peru in 1990 but was defeated by Alberto Fujimori.

Isabel Allende

(1942-present, Chile): Actually born in Peru, at age three she moved to her mother's native Chile. A successful news reporter in her twenties, she and her family fled to Venezuela after General Augusto Pinochet deposed her uncle Salvador "name", setting up a dictatorship. Her formal literary career began at age 40, when she published The House of the Spirits, a magical-realist work that chronicles several generations of the Trueba family. Other works of fiction include the short-story collection Eva Luna (1989) and Paula (1995), which detailed her care for her terminally ill daughter.

Alice Walker

(1944-) won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer for her novel The Color Purple, whose protagonist, Celie, is repeatedly raped by her father, producing the children Olivia and Adam, both of whom are immediately taken away by her father. Celie deals with her trauma by writing letters to God. Celie marries Mister, who also abuses her; she has an affair with Shug Avery, a blues singer who is also Mister's mistress. Her short story "Everyday Use" is about the cultural differences between Dee and Maggie, the two daughters of a Southern woman known as Mama.

Oresteia

(Aeschylus, c. 458 BC) Originally a four-play cycle, only three works (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides) survive; a "satyr play" entitled Proteus has been lost. Agamemnon, the first play in the trilogy, describes the murder of Agamemnon and his concubine Cassandra by Agamemnon's adulterous wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. The Libation Bearers continues the story, describing how Agamemnon's children, Orestes and Electra, avenge their father by murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. However, the Furies relentlessly pursue Orestes for his matricide, leading to the events of The Eumenides. In this third play, Orestes appeals to Athena, who organizes a trial for him (with Apollo as a defense counsel). Ultimately, when Apollo argues that the man is more important than the woman in a marriage, Orestes is acquitted, and the Furies are renamed the Eumenides, or "The Kindly Ones." The cycle has been retold numerous times in modern literature, notably by Eugene O'Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra and by Jean-Paul Sartre in The Flies.

Seven Against Thebes

(Aeschylus, c. 467 BC) This early Greek tragedy tells the story of Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, who initially agreed to rule Thebes together before Eteocles seized the kingship for himself. Most of the play consists of a conversation between Eteocles, the chorus, and a spy who describes the seven captains who have arrived to besiege the seven gates of Thebes. After each man is described, Eteocles selects the warrior who will face that attacker. When the seventh attacker is revealed to be Polyneices, Eteocles sets off to confront his brother. At the conclusion of the play, it is announced that although Eteocles's forces have turned back the invaders, the brothers have slain each other. Antigone, the sister of Eteocles and Polyneices, vows to defy the laws of Thebes by giving Polyneices a proper burial.

The Frogs

(Aristophanes, c. 405 BC) This comedy centers on the god Dionysus, who journeys to the underworld with his much smarter slave, Xanthias. Dionysus is unhappy with the low quality of contemporary theater, and plans to bring the playwright Euripides back from the dead. As the ferryman Charon rows Dionysus to the underworld (Xanthias is forced to walk), a chorus of the title creatures appears and repeatedly chants the phrase "Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax." Dionysus and Xanthias then have a series of misadventures, during which they alternately claim to be Heracles. Finally, the two find Euripides arguing with the playwright Aeschylus as to which is the better author. After the dramatists "weigh" their verses on a scale, and offer advice on how to save the city of Athens, Dionysus judges that it is Aeschylus who should be brought back to life.

Lysistrata

(Aristophanes, c. 411 BC) The title character of this comedy is an Athenian woman who decides to end the Peloponnesian War, which was still ongoing when the play premiered in 411 BC. At the beginning of the play, the title character assembles a secret "Council of Women," whose members represent many different regions of Greece. Once the women have gathered, the title character reveals her proposal: all Greek women should abstain from having sex until the men agree to stop fighting. Although Lysistrata's plan draws protests from her bawdy neighbor Calonice, and from the amorous wife Myrrhine, the Spartan Lampito reluctantly supports the idea, and helps to convince the other women. As Athenian women capture the Acropolis, the female representatives from other regions return home to enlist their compatriots in the plan. The ensuing events include conflicts between a chorus of old women and a chorus of old men, and a personal plea to Myrrhine from her husband, Cinesias. Both genders suffer from sexual deprivation, but the women of Greece remain united. With the aid of a beautiful girl called Diallage, or Reconciliation, the title character convinces the frenzied men to agree to an equitable peace.

The Birds

(Aristophanes, c. 414 BC) At the start of this comedy, two Athenians named Peisthetaerus and Euelpides seek out Tereus, a human king who was transformed into a bird called a hoopoe (some translations refer to Tereus as "Epops," the Greek word for "hoopoe"). Peisthetaerus convinces Tereus and his fellow birds to build a city in the sky, which would allow the birds to demand sacrifices from humans, and to blockade the Olympian gods. Peisthetaerus and Euelpides eat a root that gives them wings, and aid the birds in the construction of the city Nephelokokkygia, or "Cloudcuckooland." Peisthetaerus also drives away objectionable visitors, such as a poet, an oracle-monger, and a dealer in decrees. After the messenger goddess Iris is found in the city, the residents of Cloudcuckooland demand concessions from the Olympians. On the advice of Prometheus, Peisthetaerus demands that Zeus give up his mistress Basileia, or Sovereignty, from whom "all things come." Peisthetaerus marries Basileia, and is crowned king.

The Clouds

(Aristophanes, c. 423 BC) This comedy lampoons Athenian philosophers, especially Socrates and his Sophist followers, whose insubstantial, obfuscating arguments are inspired by the title goddesses. The protagonist, Strepsiades, fears that his horse-obsessed son, Pheidippides, is spending too much money. Consequently, Strepsiades wants Pheidippides to enroll in the Phrontisterion, or "Thinkery" of Socrates to learn specious arguments that can be used to avoid paying debts. Pheidippides refuses, so Strepsiades enrolls in the Thinkery himself. There, Strepsiades learns about new discoveries, such as a technique to measure how far a flea can jump. Eventually Pheidippides is also pressured into studying at the Thinkery, where he and Strepsiades are instructed by the beings Just and Unjust Discourse. Strepsiades believes that the education will enable Pheidippides to foil all creditors, but Pheidippides instead uses his new-found debating skills to justify beating up his father. In response, Strepsiades leads a mob to destroy the Thinkery.

Death of a Salesman

(Arthur Miller, 1949). This play questions American values of success. Willy Loman is a failed salesman whose firm fires him after 34 years. Despite his own failures, he desperately wants his sons Biff and Happy to succeed. Told in a series of flashbacks, the story points to Biff's moment of hopelessness, when the former high school star catches his father Willy cheating on his mother, Linda. Eventually, Willy can no longer live with his perceived shortcomings, and commits suicide in an attempt to leave Biff with insurance money.

The Crucible

(Arthur Miller, 1953). Miller chose the 1692 Salem witch trials as his setting, but the work is really an allegorical protest against the McCarthy anti-Communist "witch-hunts" of the early 1950s. In the story, Elizabeth Proctor fires the servant Abigail Williams after she finds out Abigail had an affair with her husband. In response, Abigail accuses Elizabeth of witchcraft. She stands trial and is acquitted, but then another girl accuses her husband, John, and as he refuses to turn in others, he is killed, along with the old comic figure, Giles Corey. Also notable: Judge Hathorne is a direct ancestor of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Every Man in His Humour

(Ben Jonson, 1598): Set in Jonson's contemporary London, this comedy is a "humours play," in which each character is a stock type governed by a corresponding "humour" (as theorized in Greek medicine). The plot chiefly concerns Knowell, an old gentleman who worries that his son Edward is becoming too involved with Wellbred, a fun-loving gallant Londoner. Knowell secretly follows his son to London; meanwhile, Wellbred's brother-in-law, the merchant Kitely, worries that Wellbred's behavior will give his business a bad reputation, all the while suspecting his own wife of infidelity. Various subplots involve Knowell's mischievous servant Brainworm, the braggart-captain Bobadill, and two friends of Wellbred who try to be fashionably and poetically melancholic. In the end, the kindly Justice Clement settles all of the grievances amassed over the course of the play. A follow-up, Every Man Out of His Humour, was written one year later.

Volpone

(Ben Jonson, 1605): Each character in this Jonson play is based on an animal archetype. The greedy Venetian noble "title character" (named for the Italian for "fox") cajoles gifts from men named Corbaccio ("raven"), Corvino ("crow"), and Voltore ("vulture") by faking a fatal illness, and separately promising his fortune to each man. At the urging of the title character's servant Mosca ("fly"), Corbaccio agrees to disinherit his own son Bonario by writing a new will that will name the title character as sole heir. The title character also engages in stratagems to sleep with Corvino's wife Celia, although his attempt to rape her is foiled by Bonario. In a subplot, the English traveler Peregrine humiliates a foolish fellow countryman named Sir Politick Would-Be. After a trial, the title character fakes his death and names Mosca his sole heir; Mosca's ensuing behavior prompts the title character to reveal himself, resulting in the punishment of all wrongdoing.

The Jew of Malta

(Christopher Marlowe, c. 1589): After his massive fortune is seized by Malta's governor, Ferneze, to pay tribute to the Turks, the Jewish merchant Barabas embarks on a complex journey of revenge. Barabas uses his daughter Abigail to spark a jealous feud that leads to a duel in which the governor's son Lodowick is killed. Abigail then hides in a convent and converts to Christianity, leading Barabas and his slave Ithamore to poison all of the convent's occupants. Barabas eventually aids the Turks in conquering Malta, for which he is appointed governor, but betrays the Turks in favor of the Maltese, who kill Barabas in a boiling cauldron as they retake the island. It is thought to have influenced Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

(The Tragical History of the Life and Death of) Doctor Faustus

(Christopher Marlowe, c. 1593): Two scholars named Valdes and Cornelius teach the title character how to summon a demon, which the title character romptly does, conjuring Mephistophilis. Faustus then signs his soul over to Lucifer, in exchange for 24 years of healthy life with Mephistophilis as his dutiful servant. The title character constantly rejects the pleas of an angel to accept the forgiveness of God, instead traveling and gaining worldly fame. At one point, he summons the "shade" of Helen of Troy, and exclaims "was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" On the night his deal is scheduled to expire, a clock's chimes announce that the title character is running out of time to repent. He never does, so devils appear and drag him to hell.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

(Edward Albee, 1962). The author Virginia Woolf has little to do with the story, except that Martha sings the title to George when she is mad at him in Act I. In fact, Albee got the title from graffiti he saw on a men's room wall. In the drama, George is a professor who married Martha, the college president's daughter, but the two dislike each other. Martha invites another couple, the instructor Nick and his wife Honey, for drinks after a party for her father. All four of them get drunk, and they end up bickering over their flawed marriages: Besides George and Martha's problems, Honey is barren, and Nick married her for her money.

Mourning Becomes Electra

(Eugene O'Neill, 1931). This play is really a trilogy, consisting of "Homecoming," "The Hunted," and "The Haunted." Though it is set in post-Civil War New England, O'Neill used Aeschylus's tragedy The Oresteia as the basis for the plot. Lavinia Mannon desires revenge against her mother, Christine, who with the help of her lover Adam Brant has poisoned Lavinia's father Ezra; Lavinia persuades her brother Orin to kill Brant. A distressed Christine commits suicide, and, after Orin and Lavinia flee to the South Seas, Orin cannot stand the guilt and kills himself as well, leaving Lavinia in the house alone.

The Iceman Cometh

(Eugene O'Neill, 1939). A portrait of drunkenness and hopeless dreams. Regular patrons of the End of the Line Café anticipate the annual arrival of Theodore "Hickey" Hickman, but in 1912 he returns to them sober. After the patrons reveal their "pipe dreams," Hickey implores them to give up those dreams and lead productive lives. The "name" is supposed to represent the "death" found in reality.

Long Day's Journey Into Night

(Eugene O'Neill, 1956). O'Neill wrote it fifteen years earlier and presented the manuscript to his third wife with instructions that it not be produced until 25 years after his death. Actually produced three years after he died, it centers on Edmund and the rest of the Tyrone family, but is really an autobiographical account of the dysfunction of O'Neill's own family, set on one day in August 1912. The father is a miserly actor, while the mother is a morphine addict, and the brother is a drunk; they argue and cut each other down throughout the play.

The Bacchae

(Euripides, c. 405 BC) At the start of this tragedy, the god Dionysus arrives in Thebes to seek vengeance against his aunt Agave, who has denied his immortality, and her son Pentheus, who as King of Thebes bans the worship of Dionysus. The god first drives the women of the city mad, causing them to act as wild Maenads. He then convinces Pentheus to disguise himself in animal skins, and spy on the maddened women. However, the demented Agave mistakes Pentheus for a mountain lion, and dismembers her own son. The climax of the play occurs when Agave presents the head of Pentheus to her horrified father, Cadmus. As Agave realizes what she has done, Dionysus chastises her for her lack of respect, and foretells how Cadmus will spend his final days.

Medea

(Euripides, c. 431 BC) This Euripides play retells the myth of the title character, a sorceress from Colchis who saved Jason and the Argonauts during their quest for the Golden Fleece. Set after the Argonauts' quest, the play depicts the title character's vengeance against Jason as he prepares to marry the Corinthian princess Glauce. The title character uses poisoned robes to kill Glauce and Glauce's father Creon (a different character than the Creon who appears in Sophocles's Theban plays). Not content with this, she seeks to hurt Jason further by killing the sons that she bore him. When Jason tries to confront her, she appears above the stage in a chariot pulled by dragons, and exchanges bitter words with her former lover before departing to seek refuge with King Aegeus of Athens. The play's ending is a classic example of a deus ex machina, a literary device in which plot problems are suddenly resolved by an unexpected contrivance.

All for Love (or, the World Well Lost)

(John Dryden, 1677): Dryden wrote that he "professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare" in this play, which retells the story of the Roman leader Mark Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. In Dryden's version of the tale, the Roman general Ventidius actively tries to separate the two lovers, and encourages Antony to believe that Cleopatra has been secretly consorting with the Roman Dolabella. Another of the central characters in Dryden's play is Antony's wife Octavia, who travels to Alexandria to convince Antony to reconcile. At the end of the play, the eunuch Alexas falsely tells Antony that Cleopatra has committed suicide. Antony falls upon his sword, and the grief-stricken Cleopatra lets herself be bitten by a poisonous snake. The dead lovers are then eulogized by Serapion, a priest of Isis.

The Duchess of Malfi

(John Webster, 1613): This play is a product of the Jacobean period, in which the thrilling, macabre, and fantastic were prevalent on stage. The play follows the widowed "title character" , who loves Antonio Bologna, a good-hearted nobleman below her station. Her twin brother Ferdinand denounces her affection for Antonio out of incestuous envy. Her other brother, a Cardinal, hires the former galley-slave Bosola to spy on her. Bosola discovers the title character and Antonio have married (and had children), so the Cardinal sends them into exile. Ferdinand subsequently imprisons the title character, terrorizes her with asylum patients, and arranges for her to see statues resembling the dead bodies of her husband and children. Executioners sent by Ferdinand then kill the title character and her maid Cariola. Paranoia overtakes both brothers; the Cardinal kills his mistress Julia with a poisoned bible, and Ferdinand imagines he has become a werewolf. Bosola, disgusted by his own actions, tries to murder the Cardinal but mistakenly kills Antonio instead. In a climactic confrontation, Bosola, the Cardinal, and Ferdinand all kill each other, leaving the son of the title character and Antonio to inherit what remains.

The Little Foxes

(Lillian Hellman, 1939). Set on a plantation in 1900, Hellman attempts to show that by this time any notion of antebellum Southern gentility has been destroyed by modern capitalism and industrialism. Three Hubbard siblings (Regina and her two brothers) scheme to earn vast riches at the expense of other family members, such as Regina's husband Horace and their daughter Alexandra. The title is taken from the Old Testament Song of Solomon: "'name' that spoil the vines."

A Raisin in the Sun

(Lorraine Hansberry, 1959). Her father's 1940 court fight against racist housing laws provided the basis for Hansberry's play about the Younger family, who attempt to move into an all-white Chicago suburb but are confronted by discrimination. The first play by an African-American woman to be performed on Broadway, it also tore down the racial stereotyping found in other works of the time. The title comes from the Langston Hughes poem "Harlem" (often called "A Dream Deferred").

She Stoops to Conquer (or, The Mistakes of a Night)

(Oliver Goldsmith, 1773): In this enduringly popular comedy, a wealthy gentleman's son named Charles Marlow is sent to visit the country home of Mr. Hardcastle, who has a beautiful daughter named Kate. On the way, Marlow and his companion George Hastings stop at an alehouse where Kate's half-brother, Tony Lumpkin, tricks them into thinking they are miles from their destination. Tony directs the travelers to Mr. Hardcastle's house, claiming it is an inn. There, Marlow and Hastings rudely treat the Hardcastles as innkeepers, which the Hardcastles patiently endure for the sake of their friendship with Marlow's wealthy father. At the same time, Kate discovers that Marlow is timid and reserved around high-born ladies, but is rakishly charming to lower-class women. Kate therefore "stoops" to impersonating a barmaid in order to woo Marlow. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hardcastle attempts to make her niece Constance Neville marry Tony. Constance, however, is secretly engaged to Hastings, and the pair try to obtain a casket of jewels that belongs to Constance, but which Mrs. Hardcastle carefully guards. In the end, Kate wins Marlow, and Tony discovers that he is older than the Hardcastles have led him to believe. Upon discovering he is an adult, Tony refuses the arranged marriage, freeing Constance to marry Hastings.

The Rivals

(Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1775): Like Sheridan's later play The School for Scandal, It offers a satirical take on manners and courtship. The play's heroine is Lydia Languish, a wealthy heiress who loves reading novels, and who wants her own life to imitate the tropes of romantic fiction. To win Lydia's heart, the wealthy Captain Jack Absolute pretends to be the impoverished "Ensign Beverley." Lydia is also desired by the "country gentleman" Bob Acres and the Irish baronet Sir Lucius O'Trigger, the latter of whom sends letters via the maid Lucy. However, O'Trigger's letters are actually read and answered by Lydia's guardian Mrs. Malaprop, who is infatuated with O'Trigger and uses the pseudonym "Delia" in her correspondence. (Mrs. Malaprop's comical speech patterns gave rise to the English word "malapropism," which refers to the accidental substitution of one word for another that sounds similar, but has a different meaning.) Jack's father Sir Anthony Absolute eventually exposes Jack's deception, infuriating Lydia. Jack then has an abortive duel with Sir Lucius, leading Mrs. Malaprop to admit that she is "Delia." At the end of the play, Lydia and Jack reconcile, as do their friends, the quarreling lovers Julia and Faulkland.

Oedipus Rex

(Sophocles, c. 429 BC, also known by its translated title Oedipus the King) This tragedy tells the story of the title character, a man who became king of Thebes by defeating a monster called the sphinx. After a mysterious plague devastates Thebes, the title character sends his brother-in-law Creon to ask the Oracle at Delphi about the cause of the affliction. The Oracle attributes the plague to the fact that the murderer of Laius, the previous king of Thebes, has never been caught and punished. Oedipus then seeks information from the prophet Teiresias, who is provoked into revealing that the title character himself was the killer. He initially rejects this claim, but begins to have doubts after talking with his wife Jocasta, who was once married to Laius. Jocasta recalls a prophecy that Laius would be killed by his own son, but she claims that this prophecy did not come true, because Laius was murdered by highwaymen. This leads him to recall killing a man who resembled Laius, and a prophecy which had claimed that he would kill his own father, and marry his own mother. A shepherd from Mount Cithaeron reveals the awful truth: in response to the prophecy about their son, Laius and Jocasta had tried to expose the infant Oedipus in the wilderness. However, the shepherd had taken pity on the child, and sent him away to be raised in another area. Not knowing his true heritage, He eventually left home to avoid harming the people whom he believed to be his parents, but unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy by killing Laius and marrying Jocasta. Upon learning this, Jocasta commits suicide, and he blinds himself with Jocasta's brooches. Creon assumes control of Thebes as the title character begs to be exiled along with his daughters, Ismene and Antigone.

Antigone

(Sophocles, c. 441 BC) Along with Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone is one of the three surviving "Theban plays" by Sophocles that center on the family of Oedipus. The tragedy takes place in the immediate aftermath of a battle in which Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, killed each other while struggling to control Thebes. The current ruler of the city, Creon, has declared that Eteocles will be given an honorable funeral, but Polyneices will be treated as a rebel and left unburied. Oedipus's daughter ,the title character, disobeys Creon's order, and buries her brother Polyneices against the advice of her frightened sister, Ismene. Despite the intervention of Creon's son Haemon, who is betrothed to the title character, Creon sentences the title character to be entombed alive. Soon after she is imprisoned, she hangs herself. Haemon then commits suicide out of grief, and Creon's wife Eurydice kills herself when she learns that Haemon is dead. The once-proud Creon blames himself for the loss of his wife and son, and prays for death.

The Glass Menagerie

(Tennessee Williams, 1944). Partly based on Williams' own family, the drama is narrated by Tom Wingfield, who supports his mother Amanda and his crippled sister Laura (who takes refuge from reality in her glass animals). At Amanda's insistence, Tom brings his friend Jim O'Connor to the house as a "gentleman caller" for Laura. While O'Connor is there, the horn on Laura's glass unicorn breaks, bringing her into reality, until O'Connor tells the family that he is already engaged. Laura returns to her fantasy world, while Tom abandons the family after fighting with Amanda.

A Streetcar Named Desire

(Tennessee Williams, 1947). Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski represent Williams's two visions of the South: declining "old romantic" vs. the harsh modern era. Blanche is a Southern belle who lost the family estate, and is forced to move into her sister Stella's New Orleans apartment. Stella's husband Stanley is rough around the edges, but sees through Blanche's artifice; he ruins Blanche's chance to marry his friend Mitch by revealing to Mitch that Blanche was a prostitute. Then, after Blanche confronts Stanley, he rapes her, driving her into insanity. The drama was developed into a movie, marking the breakthrough performance of method actor Marlon Brando.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

(Tennessee Williams, 1955). Centers on a fight between two sons, Gooper and Brick, over the estate of their father "Big Daddy" Pollitt, who is dying of cancer. After his friend Skipper dies, ex-football star Brick turns to alcohol and will not have sex with his wife Maggie ("the cat"). Yet Maggie announces to Big Daddy that she is pregnant in an attempt to force a reconciliation with—and win the inheritance for—Brick.

The Spanish Tragedy (or, Hieronimo is Mad Again)

(Thomas Kyd, c. 1585): A sensational hit when it was first performed, It pioneered and popularized the gory genre known as the revenge tragedy. The play is set in the wake of a war between Portugal and Spain, during which the Spanish soldier Don Andrea was killed by the Portuguese prince Balthazar. After Andrea's death, Balthazar was captured by two Spanish soldiers: Lorenzo, the nephew of the King of Spain; and Horatio, the capable son of the marshal Hieronimo. As the play begins, Andrea's ghost has returned to Earth along with the spirit of Revenge, to watch the events that will lead to Balthazar's death. Those events are put in motion by Andrea's former lover Bel-imperia, who falls in love with Horatio and rejects the smitten Balthazar. Lorenzo and Balthazar then conspire to kill Horatio, whose death devastates Hieronimo. Bel-imperia is imprisoned by Lorenzo to cover up the crime, but sends a letter written in her own blood to Hieronimo, exposing Lorenzo's schemes. During a climactic play-within-a-play, Hieronimo and Bel-imperia take vengeance by stabbing Lorenzo and Balthazar, and subsequently kill themselves. It is noted for its influence on the works of Shakespeare, especially the incriminating play-within-a-play in Hamlet.

Our Town

(Thornton Wilder, 1938). A sentimental story that takes place in the village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire just after the turn of the 20th century, this play is divided into three acts: "Daily Life" (Professor Willard and Editor Webb gossip on the everyday lives of town residents); "Love and Marriage" (Emily Webb and George Gibbs fall in love and marry); and "Death" (Emily dies while giving birth, and her spirit converses about the meaning of life with other dead people in the cemetery). A Stage Manager talks to the audience and serves as a narrator throughout the drama, which is performed on a bare stage.

The Way of the World

(William Congreve, 1700): Its complex plot (typical of Restoration comedy) concerns Mirabell and Millimant, two lovers who wish to marry. However, Millimant will lose "half her fortune" unless her choice of husband is approved by her aunt Lady Wishfort, who wants her to marry Sir Wilfull Witwoud. Mirabell enlists the married servants Waitwell and Foible to trick Lady Wishfort into falling in love with Sir Rowland, who is actually Waitwell in disguise, so that the compromised Lady Wishfort will be forced to agree to Mirabell and Millamant's marriage. The scheme is supported by Lady Wishfort's daughter, Mrs. Fainall, but exposed by a woman named Mrs. Marwood, who loves Mirabell. A resolution is reached when the rakish Mr. Fainall tries to blackmail his mother-in-law Lady Wishfort, who asks for Mirabell's help. Mirabell then produces an old contract that invalidates the blackmail attempt, securing Lady Wishfort's blessing for his marriage to Millamant.

Murasaki Shikibu

(c. 978 -c. 1015): Novelist, diarist, and lady-in-waiting. She was the author of the Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), the first known novel; the diary "her name" nikki; and a collection of tanka poems. The daughter of the court official Fujiwara Tametoki, she sat in on the classical Chinese literature lessons that her brother received, in spite of the Heian traditions against higher education for women.

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992, United States)

Along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, he was one of genre science fiction's "Big Three" writers. During the 1930s' and 1940s' "Golden Age" of science fiction pulp magazines, he worked closely with Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell Jr. to create stories such as "Nightfall," which describes a rare moment of darkness on a planet with multiple suns, and "Robbie," the first of his many works about robots with positronic brains. (The word "robot" was introduced by the Czech author Karel Čapek in the 1920 play R.U.R., which depicts the worldwide uprising of "Rossum's Universal Robots"). Before him, most stories about artificial life had followed the template established by Shelley's Frankenstein, in which a scientist who tries to usurp God's power to create life is ultimately destroyed by his own creation. He challenged this trope by creating the "Three Laws of Robotics," which robots in his stories are obligated to follow: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Mary Shelley (1797-1851, United Kingdom)

As the daughter of the philosophers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman), and the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe "name", she was a product of both the Enlightenment and Romantic eras. Her 1818 novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus helped to lay the groundwork for modern science fiction by contrasting Enlightenment ideas of progress with a Romantic conception of nature as an untameable force. The idea for Frankenstein came to her while she was taking part in a friendly writing competition at Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. Inspired by Luigi Galvani's experiments in "animal electricity," she wrote about the Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein, who reanimates dead tissue and creates a "monster." This attempt to control nature fails, as the monster murders Frankenstein's brother William, friend Henry Clerval, and wife Elizabeth before fleeing to the Arctic. Frankenstein pursues his creation, and tells his story to the explorer Robert Walton before dying. She presented an even bleaker scenario in her 1826 novel The Last Man, which describes Lionel Verney's efforts to survive a 21st-century plague that devastates human civilization.

Alan Paton

Cry, the Beloved Country: Stephen Kumalo travels from Ndotsheni to Johannesburg for his son, Absalom, who is executed for the murder of Arthur Jarvis; Theophilus Msimangu; Stephen's sister, Gertrude; Too Late the Phalarope Ah; But Your Land is Beautiful; South African

Naguib Mahfouz

Egypt; Cairo Trilogy includes Palace of Desire, Sugar Street, and Palace Walk; Midaq Alley

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, United Kingdom)

He belonged to a prominent family of British intellectuals that included the Victorian evolutionist Thomas Henry "name". Although he depicted his own social milieu in novels such as Crome Yellow and Point Counter Point, he is best known for writing about a dystopian "World State" in the 1932 novel Brave New World. Extrapolating from Henry Ford's model of industrial production and contemporary advances in biochemistry, he imagined a world in which the fictional "Bokanovsky's Process" is used to create human clones, which are then modified to posses different intellectual abilities, and sorted into social castes named after the Greek letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Inhabitants of the World State enjoy a prosperous existence, immersive entertainment known as Feelies, and the drug soma, but lack family connections and spiritual fulfillment. The shallow pleasures of the World State are contrasted with the ideals of John the Savage, a young man who grew up on a New Mexico reservation. John is initially delighted to meet the World State residents Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne, and excitedly quotes the "Brave New World" speech from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. However, John soon grows disgusted with "civilization." After the World Controller Mustapha Mond forbids John from living on an isolated island with the aspiring writer Helmholtz Watson, John unsuccessfully tries to retreat from society, and eventually hangs himself.

George Orwell (1903-1950, United Kingdom)

He condemned the totalitarian government of Joseph Stalin in the fantasy Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His speculative fiction was part of a wide-ranging body of work that also included attacks on British colonialism (the essay "Shooting an Elephant" and the novel Burmese Days), first-hand accounts of war (Homage to Catalonia) and poverty (Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier), and works of cultural criticism (the essay "Politics and the English Language"). After taking part in the Spanish Civil War and growing alarmed at the authoritarian nature of Russian communism, he wrote the 1945 novel Animal Farm as an allegory of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Animal Farm describes barnyard animals who revolt against their owner and try to create a more equitable society under the leadership of the pig Snowball, who develops principles of "Animalism" such as "Four legs good, two legs bad." However, Snowball is soon ousted by his fellow pig Napoleon, who exploits the other animals, sends the horse Boxer to be slaughtered, and degrades the principles of Animalism to "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Four years later, he imagined a future Britain subsumed into Oceania, a superpower under the harsh rule of "Big Brother", in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith and his lover Julia try to rebel against Big Brother but are tortured into compliance in the Ministry of Love. Nineteen Eighty-Four also described the distortion of the English language for political purposes ("Newspeak"), and introduced many words and phrases that are still used with reference to oppressive governments (thoughtcrime, doublethink, memory hole, "we've always been at war with Eastasia," "war is peace," "Big Brother is watching you").

Salman Rushdie (born 1947)

He is a novelist born in India, who holds British and American citizenship. His 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight's Children follows Saleem Sinai, a man with an enormous nose who is born at precisely the moment that India becomes independent, giving him telepathic powers. Other members of the novel's title group—the people born within an hour of independence—include Shiva, a child with enormous knees, and the magical Parvati-the-witch. His 1988 novel The Satanic Verses begins as the actors Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha are miraculously saved after their plane explodes over the English Channel. Upon being betrayed by Gibreel, Saladin seeks revenge by ruining Gibreel's relationship with the mountaineer Allie Cone. The Satanic Verses was condemned in a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The fatwa accused him of blasphemy, and ordered Muslims to kill him, his editors, and his publishers. In 1998, Iran agreed not to actively seek his death. He described his years of hiding in the memoir Joseph Anton; the title refers to the pseudonym that he adopted, which was inspired by the authors Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. His other novels include The Moor's Last Sigh, which is narrated by the swiftly aging Moraes Zogoiby; The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which was loosely inspired by the legend of Orpheus; and the young adult books Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Luka and the Fire of Life.

Thomas Pynchon (born 1937)

He is a reclusive American novelist. His 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow follows Tyrone Slothrop, a lieutenant in World War II whose sexual encounters seem to predict the locations of future V-2 rocket strikes. A number of characters in the novel are trying to find the secret of a mysterious device called the Schwärzgerat, which is to be installed in a rocket with the serial number 00000. He also wrote The Crying of Lot 49, in which Oedipa Maas suspects that she has become entangled in an ancient conflict between the Thurn und Taxis and Trystero mail delivery services. Other of his novels include V., in which Herbert Stencil searches for the mysterious title entity, and Inherent Vice, about the Los Angeles private investigator Doc Sportello.

Don DeLillo (born 1936)

He is an American author. His 1985 breakout novel White Noise is narrated by Jack Gladney, a professor of "Hitler Studies" at a Midwestern college. After a chemical spill results in an "Airborne Toxic Event," Jack's wife Babette begins taking a mysterious drug called Dylar. Three years later he published Libra, a novel about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's participation in a fictional conspiracy against John F. Kennedy. He also wrote the 1997 novel Underworld, in which the waste management executive Nick Shay buys the baseball that was hit by New York Giants player Bobby Thomson in the 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World."

Jules Verne (1828-1905, France)

He offered a brighter vision of technological progress in his novels of adventure, many of which doubled as works of popular science. In his 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Lidenbrock explains contemporary theories of geology and paleontology as he leads an expedition that travels beneath the Earth's crust from Iceland to the Italian volcano Stromboli. He later wrote the 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, whose narrator Pierre Aronnax offers extensive commentary on marine biology while accompanying the mysterious Captain Nemo on a voyage in the submarine Nautilus. In a more realistic vein, he considered the possibilities presented by new forms of transportation in the 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, which describes a trip taken by the Englishman Phileas Fogg and his French valet Jean Passepartout. During his travels, which are undertaken to win a bet with members of the Reform Club, Fogg falls in love with an Indian woman named Aouda and is pursued by the Scotland Yard detective Fix, who mistakenly believes that Fogg is a bank robber. Fogg ultimately wins his bet to return to the Reform Club within 80 days of his departure, with the help of an extra day gained by traveling eastward.

Joseph Heller

He satirized Army bureaucracy in his novel Catch-22, which was based on his experiences as a bombardier on the Italian front during World War II. The novel is set in Rome and on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa, where John Yossarian is stationed with the 256th Squadron. "Catch-22" is a rule stating that airmen do not have to fly missions if they are insane, but that applying to be excused from flying missions is proof of sanity; consequently, there is no way to avoid the dangerous missions. Characters in the novel include the arch-capitalist mess officer Milo Minderbinder, who sets up a syndicate called M&M Enterprises, and Major Major Major, who is accidentally promoted to the rank of major because of his unusual name. The novel's main antagonist is Colonel Cathcart, who continually raises the number of missions that airmen must fly before they are allowed to go home. In 1994 He wrote a sequel to Catch-22, titled Closing Time.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946, United Kingdom)

He used speculative fiction to explore the social issues of his day from a left-wing perspective. In the 1895 novella The Time Machine, he wrote about a "Time Traveller" who visits the year AD 802,701, and learns that humanity has diverged into two different species—the surface-dwelling Eloi, who are gentle and beautiful but intellectually limited, and the subterranean Morlocks, who resemble apes but are strong and clever enough to use the Eloi as livestock. The Time Traveller speculates that the Eloi are descended from aristocrats who were once served by the ancestors of the Morlocks. After writing about time travel, he helped to establish another of science fiction's key themes by depicting an alien invasion in the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds. The anonymous narrator of The War of the Worlds observes a Martian spaceship that lands in Surrey, and flees the "Tripods" and "Black Smoke" that the Martians use as weapons in the conquest of Earth. The invaders easily overcome human resistance but eventually perish from lack of immunity to Earth microbes. He also wrote several novels about researchers who use science to pursue unethical goals. In the 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the shipwrecked Edward Prendick discovers that the title vivisectionist performs painful experiments to transform animals into human-like "Beast Folk." A year later he published The Invisible Man, which centers on a student of physics named Griffin who plans to use his invisibility to enact a "reign of terror." However, Griffin's invisibility makes it difficult for him to exist in society (he must cover himself with clothes and thick bandages if he wishes to be seen), and he is eventually killed by an angry crowd.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)

He was a Russian-American author. His 1955 novel Lolita depicts Humbert Humbert's obsession with the adolescent Ramsdale resident Dolores Haze, whom he nicknames "Lolita." Humbert becomes Lolita's stepfather by marrying her mother Charlotte, who soon dies. Lolita and Humbert travel the U.S. before Humbert enrolls her at the Beardsley School for Girls. There, she is cast in a play written by Clare Quilty, and devises a plan of escape. In his highly meta-fictional novel Pale Fire, a 999-line poem of the same name by John Shade is the subject of a lengthy commentary by the scholar Charles Kinbote. However, Kinbote's notes are more concerned with himself than with the poem, revealing that he thinks of himself as King Charles, the exiled monarch of the land of Zembla. His other books include the novels Ada, or Ardor, which recounts an incestuous relationship; Invitation to a Beheading, about the condemned prisoner Cincinnatus, and The Defense, a Russian-language novel about the chess player Aleksandr Luzhin. In his memoir Speak, Memory, he wrote about his wife Vera and his scientific interest in butterflies.

David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

He was an American author. His massive 1996 novel Infinite Jest depicts a future North America in which years are named after corporate products. The novel is set mainly at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House and the Enfield Tennis Academy (where Hal Incandenza is a student). Hal's father, James, directs "the Entertainment," a dangerously enthralling film sought by Quebeçois terrorists known as the Wheelchair Assassins. His other novels are The Broom of the System and The Pale King, the latter of which was left unfinished at his 2008 suicide. He is also known for his essay collections, including Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

Jorge Luis Borges BOR-hayss (1899-1986)

He was an Argentine short story writer who often dealt with meta-fictional themes. His story "The Library of Babel" depicts an infinite library made up of hexagonal rooms, which contain every possible 410-page book. In "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," the fictional 20th-century author Pierre Menard writes a line-by-line reproduction of Cervantes's Don Quixote, which is much more interesting than the original because of the historical context in which the new version was produced. His story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" describes an imaginary realm, created by a secret society of intellectuals, that gradually intrudes into the world of the story. "The Aleph" is named after a point from which every other point in the universe can be perceived. Many of his best-known stories appeared in the collections Ficciones and Labyrinths, the latter of which is named after a common motif in his work. For example, in "The Garden of Forking Paths" the author Ts'ui Pên tries to create a metaphorical "labyrinth" by writing a novel in which every event is followed by every possible outcome. The story is narrated by Ts'ui Pên's descendent, Dr. Yu Tsun, who kills the Sinologist Stephen Albert to convey a coded message to German forces during World War I.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001, United Kingdom)

He wrote comic science fiction and fantasy novels that poked fun at genre tropes and the quirks of British culture. After working on Monty Python's Flying Circus, He created the BBC radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which premiered in 1978. The radio series became the basis of a series of novels (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Mostly Harmless; and the authorized sequel And Another Thing..., which was written by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer after He died). The Hitchhiker's series focuses on Arthur Dent, an ordinary Englishman who becomes one of the last humans in the universe after Earth is destroyed by the alien Vogons. Arthur and his friend Ford Prefect travel on a starship named the Heart of Gold, along with the "paranoid android" Marvin, the two-headed galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the human scientist Trillian. Arthur eventually discovers that the "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" is 42 (although the question itself remains unknown). Characters in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series sometimes consult the title reference work, which offers the advice "Don't Panic," encourages hitchhikers to carry towels at all times, and provides the recipe for a drink called the "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster." Besides the Hitchhiker's series, He also co-authored two books offering comic definitions of British place names (The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff), and wrote a pair of novels about the supernatural adventures of the private investigator Dirk Gently (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul).

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007, United States)

His fiction provides a darkly humorous response to the absurdities and violence of the twentieth century. During World War II, he was a prisoner of war in Germany and lived through the Allied firebombing of Dresden. That experience was the basis for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, in which the soldier Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time" and perceives his life in a non-linear fashion. Billy travels between the present, past, and future as he is captured by the German army, witnesses the destruction of Dresden, becomes a prosperous optometrist in the town of Ilium, is kidnapped by aliens and placed in a zoo along with the actress Montana Wildhack, and is eventually assassinated. Slaughterhouse-Five contains a number of elements that recur in other of his novels, including the veteran Eliot Rosewater, aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, the unsuccessful science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, and members of the wealthy Rumfoord family. He also wrote the novel Cat's Cradle, which describes a substance called "ice-nine" that instantly turns liquid water into a solid. Ice-nine was created by the atomic scientist Felix Hoenikker, whose life is researched by the novel's narrator, John. Another thread in Cat's Cradle concerns the "bittersweet lies" of the prophet Bokonon, who lives on the Caribbean island San Lorenzo. Bokonon comments on human stupidity after an accident that occurs during the funeral of the San Lorenzan dictator Papa Monzano causes ice-nine to fall into the ocean, destroying almost all life on Earth.

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012, United States)

His science fiction and fantasy stories often contain nostalgic elements related to his Midwestern childhood. The Illinois community Green Town is the setting of his novels Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, both of which center on boys beginning to enter adulthood. Similarly, small towns on Earth and Mars are the setting of many stories in his 1950 collection The Martian Chronicles, which is made up of loosely connected works about the expeditions of human astronauts, the displacement of indigenous Martians as human settlers arrive, and a nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. He also wrote about Mars in several stories that appear in his collection The Illustrated Man, whose title character has tattoos that foretell the future. Another theme that recurs in his works is censorship and the importance of literature. This theme is expressed most strongly in his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, which depicts a dystopian future in which "firemen" burn books. The protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag, a fireman whose wife Mildred is deeply depressed and addicted to television programs that she watches on large "parlor walls." Montag begins to question his profession after meeting the free-spirited Clarisse McClellan and secretly preserves books to read, leading to a rebuke from Fire Captain Beatty. Montag is eventually pursued by a robotic attack dog called the "Mechanical Hound," but escapes to join a community of rebels who memorize classic works of literature.

Nadine Gordimer

July's People: the title former servant takes in her former employers, Bam and Maureen Smales, the latter of whom ends the book by running toward a mysterious helicopter; South African; Burger's Daughter; The Conservationist

Chimamanda Adichie

Nigeria; Americanah Half a Yellow Sun; We Should All Be Feminists

Wole Soyinka

Nigeria; Death and the King's Horseman play: after colonial ruler Simon Pilkings stops Elesin's ritual suicide, Elesin's son, Olunde, dies in his place; The Lion and the Jewel play; Baroka; Sidi

Chinua Achebe

Nigeria; Things Fall Apart: Okonkwo lives in Umuofia and kills his adopted son, Ikemefuna; "An Image of Africa: a critique of the racism of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; Arrow of God

Sappho

Ode to Aphrodite: a largely-surviving poem written on the island of Lesbos

Homer

Odyssey: Odysseus spends ten years returning home to his wife, Penelope , and son, Telemachus , in Ithaca after the Trojan War ; encounters Circe , Polyphemus , Scylla , and Charybdis; Iliad: a chronicle of the Trojan War ; begins by invoking a goddess to "sing the rage of Achilles ," who kills Hector after the death of Patroclus ; includes a long description of the armor and shield of Achilles and a catalogue of ships

Margaret Atwood (1939-present, Canada)

One of Canada's most prominent authors of literary fiction, she has written multiple works that combine speculative elements with psychological realism. In 1985, she published The Handmaid's Tale, which portrays a dystopian near-future in which the United States has been replaced by the patriarchal Republic of Gilead. The Handmaid's Tale is narrated by Offred, whose role as a "handmaid" is to bear children for "the Commander" and his wife, Serena Joy. Offred flees her oppressive existence with the help of Nick, a chauffeur who claims to be a member of the underground Mayday resistance movement. In an epilogue set in the year 2195, the archivist Professor Pieixoto discusses Offred's unknown fate. She later wrote a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world where corporations have created bioengineered diseases and people (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam). In addition to her speculative works, She has also written historical fiction (Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, the latter of which contains a character who is a science fiction author), novels about the relationships between female friends (Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride), and a retelling of Homer's Odyssey from a female point of view (The Penelopiad).

Zadie Smith (born 1975)

She is a British novelist. Her 2000 debut novel White Teeth depicts the Bengali Muslim Samad Iqbal and his English friend Archie Jones, who both live in London. Samad's son Magid becomes an atheist scientist who joins Marcus Chalfen's project to develop a genetically modified "FutureMouse," while Magid's twin brother Millat joins a Muslim fundamentalist group called KEVIN (Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation). Both twins sleep with Archie's daughter, Irie. Her other novels include NW, which takes place in northwest London; Swing Time, which describes a troubled dancer named Tracey; and the academic novel On Beauty, which is loosely based on E. M. Forster's novel Howards End.

Athol Fugard

South Africa; "Master Harold"...and the Boys: play, describes the relationship between Hally and his servants, Sam and Willie;

J.M. Coetzee

South Africa; Disgrace: describes the decline of professor David Lurie,;The Life and Times of Michael K

Hesiod

wrote Works and Days(a farmer's almanac) and Theogony (a geneology of the gods)