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John Updike

A "new-realist" celebrated for the precision of his style and the painterly way he recreates his fictional worlds. His stories convey his vision of middle America and of the middle class holding onto its style of life while at the same time trying to adjust its mind to new ideas and new social realities. His best works include "Rabbit Run" and "Couples".

"Casey Jones"

A ballad from the early 20th century about a railroad engineer who dies valiantly in a train wreck.

Walden

A book by Henry David Thoreau describing his two years of life alone at Walden Pond in Massachusetts. He recounts his daily life in the woods, and celebrates nature and the individual's ability to live independently of society. A famous line from the book is Thoreau's statement that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet depression".

Spoon River Anthology

A collection of interrelated poems by Edgar Lee Masters. Masters recreates the fictional town of Spoon River and writes in verse the epitaphs of the deceased. Master's villagers speak one after the other from their graves--their understanding of their lies illuminated by death. Masters pictured many vivid characters In the anthology and satirizes the relations and hypocrisy of a small town.

Poor Richard's Almanack

A collection of periodicals (each one was called Poor Richard or Poor Richard Improved) by Benjamin Franklin, issued over twenty-five years in the middle of the eighteenth-century. They contain humor, information, and proverbial wisdom, such as "Early to bed and early to rise/makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."

Leaves of Grass

A collection of poems by Walt Whitman, written mainly in free verse. Published with revisions every few years in the late 19th century, it contains such well known poems as "I Hear America Singing," "Song of Myself," and "Oh Captain, My Captain."

Mourning Becomes Electra

A drama by Eugene O'Neill. The Mannon family is driven to their self-destructive behavior by inner needs, forbidden love, and compulsions they can neither understand nor control.

Naturalism

A literary movement that shares with Realism its attention to the speech and behavior of the present, but considers people's behavior to be determined by social and economic forces beyond human control. Some of the best-known naturalists are Frank Norris and Stephen Crane.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A nineteenth-century American author known for his novels and short stories that explore themes of sin and guilt. His works include The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables .

Washington Irving

A nineteenth-century American author. His works include " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle".

The Color Purple

A novel (1982) by Alice Walker, Celie suffers the poverty, racism, sexual abuse, and ignorance of a sharecropper family. Through strength of character she endures it all rises in the end to a serene accommodation to her existence and restoration to those she loves.

The Sun Also Rises

A novel by Ernest Hemingway about a group of young Americans living in Europe in the 1920s It captures the disillusionment and cynicism of the Lost Generation

the Great Gatsby

A novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, recounting the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby, a millionaire who makes elaborate schemes to win back his former mistress. The novel shows the rise and fall of one man's American Dream.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

A novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe; it paints a grim picture of life under slavery. The title character is a pious, passive slave, who is eventually beaten to death by the overseer Simon Legree. Published shortly before the Civil War, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" won support for the anti-slavery cause. Although Stowe presents Uncle Tom as a virtuous man, the expression "Uncle Tom" is often used today as a term of reproach for a subservient black person who tolerates discrimination.

Little Women

A novel by Louisa May Alcott about four sisters growing up in New England in the 19th century

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

A novel by Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn, a boy running away from his father, and his friend Jim, a runaway slave, take to the Mississippi River on a raft. Eventually Jim is captured, and Huck helps him escape. The lessons Huck learns about life are a prevailing theme of the book.

The Scarlet Letter

A novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne about Hester Prynne, a woman in 17th century New England who is convicted of adultery. At the beginning of the story, she is forced to wear a scarlet letter A on her dress as a sign of her guilt. Hester will not reveal the identity of her partner in adultery. Her husband comes to realize who her lover is and takes revenge on him. Eventually her dying lover publicly admits his part in the adultery.

Invisible Man

A novel by Ralph Ellison, set in the United States in the 1930s; it depicts a black man's struggle for identity. In the end, the unnamed narrator runs for his life and falls into a cellar. He decides to remain underground and write a novel about the absurdities of his life.

Babbitt

A novel by Sinclair Lewis The title character, an American real estate agent in a small city, is portrayed as a crass loud, over optimistic boor who thinks about only money and speaks in cliches such as "You've gotta have pep, by golly!" By extension, a "Babbitt" Is a narrow, materialistic businessman

Roots

A novel by the twentieth-century American author Alex Haley, later made into a popular television drama. It traces a black American's heritage to Africa, where his ancestors had been captured and sold as slaves.

Tobacco Road

A novel from the 1930s by Erskine Caldwell, about a family of sharecroppers from Georgia and their many tragedies. Tobacco Road was made into a play that ran for several years on Broadway. A "Tobacco Road" is a poor shantytown, usually in the rural South, and usually populated by whites.

Gone With The Wind

A novel from the 1930s by Margaret Mitchell. Set in Georgia in the period of the Civil War, it tells of the three marriages of the central character, Scarlet O'Hara, and of the devastation caused by the war. The film version of Gone With The Wind, also from the 1930s, is one of the most successful films ever made.

"a streetcar named desire"

A play by Tennessee Williams about the decline and tragic end of Blanche DuBois, a southern belle who, as she puts it, has "always depended on the kindness of strangers". Set in New Orleans, Dubois is an alcoholic nymphomaniac with a lurid past. She disturbs the balanced relationship between Stanley and Stella

Our Town

A play by Thornton Wilder. The play deals with everyday life in a small town in New England.

Death of a Salesman

A play from the 1940s by the American writer Arthur Miller Willy Loman, a salesman who finds himself regarded as useless in his occupation because of his age, kills himself. A speech made by a friend of Willy's after his suicide is well-known and it ends with the lines: "Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman has got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory."

"The Raven"

A poem by Edgar Allen Poe. A man mourning for his lost lover is visited by a raven that tells him he will see her "nevermore." The poem begins with the famous lines: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"The Village Blacksmith"

A poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about a village blacksmith in New England. It begins: Under the spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands. The smith, a mighty man is he With large and sinewy hands.

catch 22

A war novel from 1960s Joseph Heller. In the novel, "Catch 22" is a provision in army regulations, it stipulates that a soldier's request to be relieved from active duty can be accepted only if he is mentally unfit to fight. Any soldier, however, who has the sense to ask to be spared the horrors of war is obviously mentally sound, and therefore must stay to fight. Figuratively, catch 22 is any absurd arrangement that puts a person in trouble in a double bind: for example, a person can't get a job without experience, but can't get experience without a job

the New Yorker

A weekly magazine known for nonfiction and short stories, and for its cartoons Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, and James Thurber are notable authors whose work appeared regularly in the magazine

Zora Neal Hurston

An important Harlem Renaissance writer whose masterpiece was Their Eyes Were Watching God. Her writing was very regional and closely followed the speech patterns of central Florida.

Herman Melville

Nineteenth-century author known for "Moby Dick". In his writing, Melville drew on several adventurous years spent at sea.

Horatio Alger Jr.

Nineteenth-century author known for his many books in which poor boys become rich through their earnest attitudes and hard work. A true story of spectacular worldly success achieved by someone who started near the bottom is often called a "Horatio Alger story."

Mark Twain

The nom de plume of Samuel L. Clemens, an author and humorist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He is famous for his stories with settings along the Mississippi River; his books include "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "Life on the Mississippi", and "The Prince and the Pauper". Ernest Hemingway, America's most noted author, said that all of American literature can be traced back to Mark Twain.

Gertrude Stein

Twentieth-century author who lived most of her life in France. She wrote her life story as "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" (Toklas was her companion) and she is said to have introduced the phrase "Lost Generation" to describe Americans who wandered about Europe after WWI. Her works also include poems and the story collection "Three Lives"; and the most famous line from her poetry is "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose".

e.e. cummings

Twentieth-century author who spurred the use of many conventions of standard written English in his poetry. He often avoided using capital letters, even in his name and experimented freely with typographic conventions, grammar, and syntax. He wrote poetry on love, the failings of public institutions, and many other subjects.

Eudora Welty

Twentieth-century author who was a Southern regional realist. Her pictures of twentieth-century life in rural and small town Mississippi accurately reflects both its surfaces and its deeper psychological currents. Her most famous stories are "Why I Live at the P.O." and "The Petrified Man".

Thornton Wilder

Twentieth-century writer best known for his play "Our Town".

Tennessee Williams

Twentieth-century writer famous for his plays, which portray violent passions in ordinary people; these plays include "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", and "The Glass Menagerie". From WW2 until his accidental death in 1983, Williams shared with Arthur Miller the distinction of being the foremost American dramatist.

Maya Angelou

Twentieth-century writer whose best-known work is "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", an autobiographical account of growing up as a black girl in the rural South.

Deism

an 18th-century Enlightenment religion emphasizing reason, not miracles; partly a reaction against Calvinism and religious superstition

puritanism

emerged in England around the middle 1500s. Its aim was to "purify" the Church of England. The term is frequently used to refer to a strictly, even rigidly moral attitude.

Louisa May Alcott

nineteenth-century author, known for Little Women and Little Men, along with other books for and about children

O. Henry

the pen name for William Sydney Porter. Twentieth-century author known for "The Gift of the Magi" and other short stories. He specialized in surprise endings and tales filled with irony.

James Thurber

twentieth-century author and cartoonist; author of "The Secret Life of Walter and Mitty". His humorous drawing, short stories, and essays poke gentle fun out the lives and folly of his men and women

F. Scott Fitzgerald

twentieth-century author known for his short stories and for his novels, including "The Great Gatsby" and "This Side of Paradise". He led a tempestuous life with his wife, Zelda, and was one of the several talented Americans, including Ernest Hemingway, who lived in Paris in the 1920s.

Ogden Nash

twentieth-century author known for his witty poems, many of them published in The New Yorker. They are marked by outrageous rhymes such as those in "The Baby" ("A bit of talcum/is all walcum") or in "Reflections on Ice-Breaking" ("Candy/is dandy/but liquor/is quicker")

Gloria Steinem

twentieth-century author, journalist, and advocate of women's rights, one of the leaders of the women's liberation movement. Steinem was a founder of Ms. Magazine

Carl Sandburg

twentieth-century author. His widely varied works include poems about the countryside and industrial heartland of the United States, especially Chicago, using the rhythms of their speech, the structure of the way they said things

H.L Mencken

twentieth-century writer known for his works of satire, mainly essays. Mencken mocked American society for its Puritanism, its anti-intellectualism, and its emphasis on conformity

"Ships that pass in the night"

words from the poem "Elizabeth", by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The full passage reads: Ships that pass in the night, and speak in other in the passing, only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; so on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence

Captain Ahab

The captain of the ship the Pequod in Moby Dick by James Melville. Ahab is obsessed with capturing the great white whale, Moby Dick.

Natty Bumppo

The central character in The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper Natty, a settler, is taught by the native Americans and adopts their way of life

"The land was ours before we were the lands"

The first line of the poem "The Gift Outright" by Robert Frost

Richard Wright

A twentieth-century American author known for his novels dealing with the black experience in the United States. Two of his best known works are Black Boy and Native Son. Wright was the first African-American writer to win a broad response from the reading public.

the beat poets

A group flourishing in the 1950's that emphasized mysticism and rejection of social taboos. Within the "beat" counterculture, the poet is a central figure, a guru of sorts, whose style of living, as much as his poetry, challenges social values and offers moral and spiritual instruction. Alan Ginsberg and Gary Snyder were leaders in the Beat movement.

Lost Generation

A group of writers and artists who lived and wandered in Europe during and after WW1. They are called "lost" because after the war, many of them were disillusioned with the world in general and unwilling to move into a settled life. Gertrude Stein is usually credited with popularizing the expression. The characters in the book "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway, are often mentioned as examples of the lost generation.

"The Fall of the House of Usher"

A horror story by Edgar Allan Poe. At the end of the story, two of the Usher family fall dead, and the ancestral mansion of the Ushers splits in two and sinks into a lake

"Shoot, if you must, this old gray head."

A line from "Barbara Frietchie," a poem from the Civil War years by the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, which describes a fictional incident in the war. Barbara Frietchie, aged over ninety, displays a Union flag, when confederate traps, march through her town. The soldiers shoot the flag off its staff, but Barbara Frietchie catches it, leans out the window, and addresses the soldiers: "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head/ But spare your country's flag!' she said."

The Gift of The Magi

A short story by O. Henry An extremely poor young couple are determined to give Christmas presents to each other He sells his watch to buy a set of combs for her long hair She cuts off her hair and sells it to buy him a watch band

Poet Laureate

America's national poet. The position was created in 1985, and Robert Penn Warren was appointed in 1986. Robert Pinksy was the poet laureate in 2000.

Black Boy

An autobiographical novel by Richard Wright, portraying racial conflicts in the rural south.

Realism

Movement in literature in the second half of the nineteenth century that sought to record accurately the speech and behavior of ordinary people and to predict life honestly, without recourse to melodrama or improbable events. Some of the best-known Realists are Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and Henry James.

Arthur Miller

Miller shares with Tennessee Williams the distinction of being the best American dramatist from WWII to the present. His plays are based on emotion, often looking at the struggle between right and wrong, the American myth of success, generation gaps, and siblings with contrasting values. His most famous plays are "Death of a Salesman" and "The Crucible".

Harlem Renaissance

Name given to the period from the end of WW1 and through the middle of the 1930s Depression, during which a group of talented African-American writers produced a sizeable body of literature in the four prominent genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and essay. Common themes included alienation and the use of blues tradition. Major writers included Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Jean Toomer, and Anna Bontemps.

A Farewell to Arms

Novel by Ernest Hemingway set in WWI. An American soldier and an English nurse fall in love; he deserts to join her, and she dies in giving birth to their child. Robert Jordan and Maria emerge as two of the most famous American literary characters.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Novel by Ernest Hemingway set in the Spanish Civil War. The title is taken from a line in sermon by English essayist and poet John Donne.

Saul Bellow

Perhaps the foremost among the American novelists who came into prominence after WWII, 1976 Nobel Prize winner, Bellow, is a part of the novelistic mainstream. His books have the rich flavor of his urban Jewish upbringing. "Henderson the Rain King" and "Herzog" are his two most famous works.

Pulitzer Prize

The prestigious awards given annually for excellence in American journalism, literature, and music.

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated"

The text of a cable sent by Mark Twain from London to the press in the United States after his obituary had been mistakenly published. Twain died at the age of 75 on his birthday. His birth and death were both marked by the passing of Haley's Comet.

Toni Morrison

Twentieth-century American author awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993. Morrison's literary stem to William Faulkner and American writers from further south. Her lasting impression in literature is of sympathy and humanity, both based on profound humor. Her works include "Song of Solomon", "Beloved", and "Tar Baby".

Ralph Ellison

Twentieth-century author best known for the book "The Invisible Man". The novel won the National Book Award and is regarded as a classic of modern literature. Ellison resists being categorized as a black writer, aiming his fiction to address the universal human condition

John Dos Passos

Twentieth-century author best known for the three novels that make up the U.S.A. trilogy. Passos relied heavily on the stream-of-consciousness effect in his novels.

T.S Eliot

Twentieth-century author born and raised in America. Eliot immigrated to England where he wrote poems, plays, and essays, and urged the use of ordinary language in poetry. He was much concerned with the general emptiness of modern life and with the revitalization of religion. Among Eliot's best-known works are the poems "The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land", and the play "Murder in the Cathedral"

"miles to go before I sleep"

Words from the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost

enlightenment

a movement in the 18th-century that focused on the ideals of good sense, benevolence, and a belief in liberty, justice, and equality as the natural rights of man.

The Catcher in the Rye

a novel from the 1950s by J.D Salinger. It relates to the experiences of Holden Caulfield, a sensitive but rebellious youth, who runs away from his boarding school

existentialism

a philosophical movement embracing the view that the suffering individual must create meaning in an unknowable chaotic, and seemingly empty universe

"Casey at the Bat"

a poem by Ernest Lawrence thayer from the late nineteenth century about Casey, an arrogant, overconfident baseball player who brings his team down to defeat by refusing to swing at the first two balls pitched to him, and then missing on the third. The poem's final line is "There is no joy in Mudville - the mighty Casey has been struck out."