Literature

William Cullen Bryant

Thanatopsis, Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood, edited New York Post

John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men (strong giant half-wit migrant worker Lennie accidentally kills woman who seduces him and is shot by friend George to protect him from lynch mob), The Grapes of Wrath (Joad family travels from OK to CA during the Great Depression to find work picking fruit; Tom Joad becomes involved in strikes and kills a man; Rose of Sharon has baby), Travels with Charlie, In Dubious Battle (Communist Mac's friend Jim Nolan murdered; Doc Burton helps striking CA fruit pickers), East of Eden (Salinas Valley: Adam Trask and Cathy have two sons; Cal kills Aron by telling him mom is a prostitute), Tortilla Flat (carefree Danny meets with simple friends Pablo, Big Joe Portagee, Jesus Maria Corcoran, and Pirate in his home, "like the Round Table"), The Pearl (CA Indian pearl-fisher and wife Juana's baby bitten by scorpion; they pay doctor with large pearl)

Edmund Burke

On American Taxation, On Conciliation with the Colonies, Reflections on the French Revolution

Wordsworth and Coleridge

Lyrical Ballads (launched Romanticism; includes Tintern Abbey and Rime of the Ancient Mariner)

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Lyrics of a Lowly Life

John Trumbull

M'Fingal (American Revolution: Scotch-American Tory orator M'Fingal is tarred and feathered and repents)

Cotton Mather

Magnalia Christi Americana: The Ecclesiastical History of NE from its First Planting 1700-1800

Sinclair Lewis

Main Street (Carol Kennicott tires of physician husband Will and tries to bring culture to dull Gopher Praire, MN [based on Sauk Centre]), Dodsworth, Arrowsmith (Martin Arrowsmith, a bacteriologist, goes to VT farm and West Indies), Babbit (Zenith, the Zip City: George F. Babbitt, real estate broker, fears ostracism but encourages son Tom to rebel), Elmer Gantry (Kansas City: ex-football player Elmer Gantry becomes popular but hypocritical minister) It Can't Happen Here (Berzelius Windrip sets up fascist dictatorship in US; Doremus Jessup and Walt Trowbridge in Canada oppose him)

Edward Albee

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (history professor George and wife Martha invite new instructor and barren wife for a drink; all get drunk and become sadistic), Seascape, Tiny Alice, Three Tall Women, The Zoo Story (bum Jerry accosts Peter in Central Park and stabs himself)

Frederick Douglass

- (escaped slave) - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave, My Bondage and My Freedom, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass

Mary Wollstone Craft

- Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus (Germany: student Frankenstein creates nameless monster by galvanism which is shunned by all and turns to evil; destroys Frankenstein at the North Pole)

James Baldwin

- Go Tell It on the Mountain, Nobody Knows My Name, Another Country (study of love among blacks and whites in NYC)

J.r.r Tolkein

- Lord of the Rings (including The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King, sequels to The Hobbit; Third Age of Middle Earth: Lord of Darkness Sauron lost a magical ring which gives absolute power but corrupts its users; Bilbo Baggins recovered the ring and his nephew Frodo becomes heir; hobbits form a Fellowship to burn the ring at Mount Doom; Frodo and servant Sam Gamgee try to complete mission; Third Age gives way to Dominion of Man; sorcerer Gandolph)

William Blake

- Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience (contrast each other; The Lamb vs. The Tiger [Tiger Tiger Burning bright], The Divien Image vs. The Human Abstract, etc.), Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (doctrine of Contraries), Milton (John Milton returns from Heaven to correct misinterpretations of his work)

Arthur Miller

- The Crucible (1692 Salem: John and Elizabeth Proctor, Abigail Williams accuses Elizabeth of witchcraft, Mary Warren also makes accusations, Giles Corey), Death of a Salesman (salesman Willy Loman considers himself a failure and commits suicide; other characters include wife Linda and sons Biff and Happy)

Shirley Jackson

- The Lottery (winner is stoned)

Emily Bronte

- Wuthering Heights (Ellis Bell pseudonym; Mr. Earnshaw raises waif Heathcliff at Wuthering Heights; his daughter Catherine likes him while his son Hindley hates him; Heathcliff leaves for 3 years when Catherine says marrying him would degrade her; Catherine marries Edgar Linton; years later Hindley invites polished Heathcliff back and he elopes with Edgar's sister; Catherine dies in childbirth; widower Heathcliff makes Catherine's daughter marry his sickly son Linton; Heathcliff dies and Cathy devotes herself to cousin Hareton, Hindley's son)

George Orwell

1984 (two rebel against Big Brother [Stalin]), Animal Farm (parody of Russian Revolution; Jones' farm controlled by pig Napoleon

Washington Irving - (the "American Goldsmith")

A History of New York by Diedrich Knickerbocker (satire of historians), Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon (including Rip Van Winkle [Rip Van Winkle drinks from dwarf's keg with dog Wolf in Catskills and sleeps for 20 years; like German Peter Klaus], Sleepy Hollow [schoolmater Ichabod Crane loves Katrina Van Tassel but is scared away by rival Brom Bones who masquerades as headless horseman]), The Alhambra, A Tour of the Praires, biographies of Columbus and Washington

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlett, The Hound of the Baskervilles (English moors: Sherlock Holmes and assistant Dr. Watson investigate death of Sir Charles Baskerville, involving an apparition and a family curse)

John Dryden

Absalom and Achitophel (attacks Puritan attempts to exclude Catholic duke of York from English throne; Achitophel [earl of Shaftesbury], Absalom [duke of Monmouth]; added to by Nahum Tate), MacFlecknoe (depicts Thomas Shadwell as successor of Richard Flecknoe in bad verse), Conqust of Grenada, The Medal (criticizes earl of Shaftesbury, acquitted of treason), The Hind and the Panther (James II is lion who protects hind [Church of Rome] from bear [Independents], wolf [Presbyterians], hare [Quakers], ape [Freethinkers], boar [Anabaptists], fox [Arians], and panther [Church of England]), All for Love or The World Well Lost (Antony and Cleopatra), Essay of Dramatic Poesie (4 Englishmen on barge on Thames want to see battle with Dutch fleet; talk about drama), Annus Mirabilis (describes 1666 London fire and Dutch War), translated Vergil

Francis Bacon

Advancement of Learning, New Atlantis (voyage to Bensalem Island, which had Solomon's House, inspiration for Royal Society), Novum Organum (presents "new instrument" of inductive method)

Anne Bronte

Agnes Gray (ill-treated governess Agnes Gray marries curate Mr. Weston), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Eugene O' Neill

Ah, Wilderness (July 4 1906: adolescent Tommy Miller in adult world) All God's Chillun Got Wings (Ella Downey marries lawyer Jim Harris, becomes racist to feel superior) Anna Chrisitie (Christopher Christopherson, a Swedish-American barge captain, sends daughter Anna Chrisite to St. Paul where she becomes a prostitute; she loves Mat Burke), Beyond the Horizon (brothers Robert and Andrew Mayo love same woman), Desire Under the Elms (elderly father Ephraim Cabot marries Abbie, who seduces his son Eban), Emperor Jones (Brutus Jones, a former Pullman porter, sets himself up as a West Indian island dictator but is killed in revolt), The Great God Brown (successful businessman takes the mask of artist Dion Anthony), The Iceman Cometh (NYC: salesman Theodore Hickman in End of the Line Caf� bar tells about killing his wife), Lazarus Laughed (Lazarus preaches new religion of laughter after being raised by Jesus; Caligula stabs Lazarus), Long Day's Journey Into Night (autobiographical story of actor Edmund Tyrone and family, including drunk son and servant Cathlen), Marco Millions (Kublai Khan's daughter loves Marco Polo but he only wants money), A Moon for the Misbegotten (unfulfilled love of alcoholic and farm woman), Mourning Becomes Electra (trilogy based on Oresteia by Aeschylus, set in post Civil War NE; General Ezra Mannon's [ Agamemnon] wife Christine [Clytemnestra] has affair with Adam Brant [Aegisthus], and daughter Lavinia [Electra] persuades her brother Orin [Orestes] to shoot him), Strange Interlude (Nina Leeds' fianc�e dies in WWI; she marries Sam Evans but aborts their child but has baby from affair with Dr. Darrell), The Hairy Ape (ship stoker Yank rejected by IWW and crushed by gorilla at NYC zoo)

Lewis Caroll

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Alice, Mad Hatter, Ugly Duchess, Mock Turtle, Queen of Hearts, Cheshire Cat, Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse; illustrated by Sir John Tenniel), Through the Looking Glass (Alice goes into mirror; world is reversed; becomes white pawn in chess game with land divided by brooks and hedges; meets Humpty Dumpty, Lion, Unicor, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and White Knight)

Robert Penn Warren

All the King's Men (US South: Willie Stark, like Huey Long; narrated by Jack Burden)

William Shakespeare

All's Well That Ends Well (France: Helena cures French king and chooses to marry Bertram, she tricks him to gain his ring and bear his child), As You Like It (Rosalind disguises herself as boy Ganymede and meets Orlando, who is reconciled to his brother Oliver by saving his life; Duke Frederick becomes a monk and four couples are united at feast of Hymen; clown Touchstone woos Audrey), Comedy of Errors (Aemilia and Aegeon have twins, both named Antipholus, and both with slaves Dromio; one goes to Syracuse and one to Ephesus but eventually reunited after much confusion), Cymbeline (Britain: King Cymbeline banishes Posthumous Leonatus who married his daughter Imogen; in Rome Iachimo bets Imogen will be unfaithful and steals her bracelet; servant Pisanio allows Imogen to escape dressed as a boy; Iachimo's villany exposed), Love's Labor's Lost (4 men vow to eschew women for 3 years but fall in love; King Ferdinand of Navarre with French princess, Biron with Rosaline, Longaville with Maria, and Dumain with Katherine; others include Don Armado, clown Costard, and constable Dull), Measure for Measure (Vienna: Duke Vincentio disguises self as Friar Lodowick and appoints Antonio to enforce laws; Claudio sentenced to death for seducing Juliet; his sister Isabella refuses to yield to Antonio to save Claudio; Lodowick arranges to trick Antonio into thinking Mariana is Isabella), Merchant of Venice (Antonio borrows money from Jewish Shylock to send Bassanio from Venice to Belmont to marry Portia, promising a pound of flesh if not repaid in three months; Portia and maid Nerissa rescue Antonio at his trial; Shylock's daughter Jessica elopes with Bassanio's friend Lorenzo), Merry Wives of Windsor (Sir John Falstaff tries to seduce Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page, who trick him; Mr. Ford disguises self as Mr. Brook; Slender and Dr. Caius love Mrs. Page's daughter Anne but she elopes with Fenton) Midsummer Night's Dream (Theseus duke of Athens marries Amazon Queen Hippolyta; Egeus makes his daughter Hermia, who loves Lysander, marry Demetrius, who is loved by Helena; found by Fairy King Oberon and Queen Titania; Puck uses magic love-juice; weaver Bottom and his artisans perform Pyramus and Thisbe play), Much Ado about Nothing (friends get Benedick and Beatrice to marry; Don John stages assignation between Borachio and Margaret to keep Claudio from marrying Hero but fails), Pericles Prince of Tyre (Pericles accuses King Antiochus of incest with daughter; Pericles flees Tyre and is shipwrecked at Pentapolis and marries King Simonides' daughter Thaisa; Thaisa has baby Marina but is presumed dead and put to sea in a chest; Ephesian Cerimon revives Thaisa and she becomes votaress in temple of Diana; Cleon raises Marina but wife Dionyza tries to kill her, but is rescued by pirates and marries Lysimachus; Pericles finds Marina), Taming of the Shrew (play performed for drunken tinker Christopher Sly; Petruchio marries high-tempered Katharina, daughter of Baptista, and "tames her", winning a bet on test of wife's obedience; Lucentio becomes tutor of Katharina's sister Bianca and marries her), The Tempest (Prospero's brother Antonio and King Alonso of Naples, who had usurped his dukedom of Milan 12 years earlier, wreck in tempest on enchanted island where Prospero reigns; they search for Alonso's son Ferdinand, who landed elsewhere and fell in love with Prospero's daughter Miranda; sprite Ariel plays music; all reconciled), Trolius and Cressida (Trojan prince Troilus pursues Cressida during Trojan War truce; Pandarus helps them get together; her dad exchanges her for a Trojan prisoner; Diomedes brings her to Greek camp; at feast in Achilles' tent Troilus learns she is unfaithful; Hector kills Patroclus and Achilles kills Hector), Twelfth Night or What You Will (Sebastian and sister Viola shipwreck off Illyria; she disguises self as boy Cesario, becomes page of Orsino, and loves him; Orsino loves Olivia, who mourns for her dead brother; Olivia loves Viola and marries look-alike Sebastian; Orsino marries Viola; Maria, Sir Toby Belch, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek work against Olivia's steward Malvolio in low comedy), Two Gentlemen of Verona (friends Valentine and Proteus both want duke of Milan's daughter Silvia, who loves foolish Thurio; Proteus dumps Julia and banishes Valentine; Silvia joins Valentine and they are pursued by Proteus, whose page is Julia disguised; Valentine rescues Silvia from Proteus and they marry; Proteus repents and marries Julia); tragedies: Hamlet (Denmark: when Hamlet's dad dies, uncle Claudius marries his mom Gertrude and becomes king; dad's ghost accuses Claudius of murdering him; Polonius [who gives advice to son: "to thine own self be true"] believes Hamlet is mad because he rejects his daughter Ophelia; Claudius reacts violently to play about the king's death; Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius and is sent to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who have letters telling king to kill Hamlet; Ophelia commits suicide; Hamlet and her brother Laertes both die in duel; Norway King Fortinbras restores order), Othello The Moor of Venice (Iago offended because Othello appointed Cassio chief lieutenant; Iago hints Othello's wife Desdemona, daughter of Senator Brabantio, had affair with Cassio; finds her handkerchief in Cassio's possession; Othello strangles Desdemona; Iago's wife Emilia discovers plot; Iago tortured; "loved not wisely but too well"), King Lear (King Lear divides kingdom among two daughters Regan and Goneril who pretended to love him; third daughter Cordelia becomes wife of French king and is later hanged; Lear's servant earl of Kent is put in stocks; Edmund turns Gloucester against his real son Edgar), Macbeth (shortest Shakespeare play; tribute to James I; three witches tell Macbeth he will be thane of Glamis, thane of Cawdor, and king, and that sons of friend Banquo will later be kings; Lady Macbeth convinces him to murder King Duncan; Macbeth murders Banquo but his son Fleance escapes; Lady Macbeth sleepwalks and commits suicide; Macduff and Duncan's son Malcolm kill Macbeth and Malcolm becomes king), Julius Caesar (Cassius convinces Brutus that Julius Caesar is threat to Rome; Brutus talks with wife Portia; Brutus and Cassius murder Caesar on Ides of March although he had been warned by wife Calpurnia; Antony speaks at Caesar's funeral and inflames citizens against murderers, Cassius and Brutus lose to Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius at Philippi and commit suicide), Antony and Cleopatra (Rome and Egypt: Marc Antony, Roman triumvir, leaves wife Octavia for Cleopatra, queen of Egypt; loses Battle of Actium to Octavian; Antony and Cleopatra commit suicide), Romeo and Juliet (Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet secretly married by Friar Laurence; her cousin Tybalt kills his friend Mercutio and Romeo kills Tybalt and is banished from Verona; Juliet takes sleeping potion rather than marry Paris; Romeo drinks poison; Juliet stabs self), Timon of Athens (Timon abandoned by friends when he has financial problems as Apemantus had warned; Timon leaves Athens and finds gold and General Alcibiades in a cave; Timon finances Alcibiades' expedition against Athens because he was banished for defending a condemned soldier; servant Flavius rewarded; they reach compromise with Athens to only get revenge on enemies but then Timon dies), Titus Andronicus (Titus Andronicus beats Goths and returns to Rome with Queen Tamora and 3 sons; 1 son sacrificed; Saturninus declared emperor and claims Titus's daughter Lavinia; his brother Bassanius abducts Lavinia and he marries Tamora; Tamora and Moorish lover Aaron kill Bassanius and rape Lavinia, cutting off her hands and tongue; 2 of Titus's sons executed and another banished, and leads Gothic army; Titus serves Tamora her sons in a pie, kills Lavinia, and stabs Tamora; Saturninus kills Titus and is killed by Lucius), Coriolanus (Caius Martius renamed Coriolanus after defeating Volscians at Corioli; joins Aufidius and plans to attack Rome; persuaded by mom Volumnia and wife Virgilia to spare city; murdered by Aufidius), Winter's Tale (Queen Hermione invites King Polixenes of Bohemia to stay longer but King Leontes orders Camillo to poison him, but Camillo flees with Polixenes; Hermione sent to prison and daughter abandoned on shore; Leontes repents; 16 years later Polixenes' son Florizel loves Leontes' lost daughter Perdita, a shepherdess, and they flee to Sicilia and marry; Leontes and Polixenes reconciled); historical dramas: King John (King John, supported by Philip Faulconbridge, fights Arthur duke of Brittany and the pope; John is poisoned and son Henry III becomes king), Richard II (King Richard banishes Henry Bolingbroke and Thomas Mowbray; Henry's dad John of Gaunt dies and Richard confiscates inheritance to finance Irish war; Henry invades England and imprisons Richard, becoming King Henry IV; Sir Pierce of Exton murders Richard and Henry does penance in Holy Land), Richard III (Richard duke of Gloucester causes death of brother George duke of Clarence and marries Lady Anne; imprisons Edward's sons in Tower and seizes power with duke of Buckingham's help; defeated at Bosworth Field by Lancaster under earl of Richmond ["a horse a horse my kingdom for a horse"], earl of Richmond becomes King Henry VII and marries Elizabeth, ending 30 year War of the Roses), Henry IV Part I (Henry Percy [Hotspur] defeats Scottish barons and demands ransom of Edmund Mortimer, captured by Owen Glendower; Henry IV refuses to ransom the pretender to the throne, so Percy family joins the rebels; Prince Hal [future Henry V] follows Sir John Falstaff and his revelers but defeats rebels at Shrewsbury, killing Hotspur), Henry IV Part II (earl of Northumberland leads rebels who agree to disband but treacherous John of Lancaster kills them; Hal becomes king and banishes Falstaff), Henry V (Henry V invades France, wins at Agincourt 1415, and marries Catherine of Valois; Falstaff dies), Henry VI Part I (Henry VI's uncles John duke of Bedford and Humphrey duke of Gloucester take control; French under Joan La Pucelle drive out English; Richard Plantagenet quarrels with Beuforts of Lancaster; Henry marries Margaret of Anjou rather than daughter of French earl of Armagnac), Henry VI Part II (Margaret of Anjou and duke of Suffolk convict duchess of Gloucester of sorcery to force Humprhey's retirement; Riachard Plantagenet encourages Jack Cade to rebel, then defeats Henry at St. Albans 1455), Henry VI Part III (Richard Plantagenet agrees to let Henry VI rule during his lifetime; Margaret of Anjou puts Richard to death at Wakefield but his sons Edward IV and Richard III defeat her at Towton; Edward IV becomes king and marries Lady Elizabeth Grey and defeats Margaret at Tewkesbury 1471, killing Henry's son Edward prince of Wales; Richard III murders Henry in the Tower), Henry VIII (Edward Stafford wanted to warn Henry about Cardinal Wolsey but is falsely accused of treason and executed; Thomas Cranmer annuls Henry's marriage to Katharine of Aragon and Henry marries Anne Bullen), Sonnets (154; 3 quatrains and couplet; 1-126 to noble friend, maybe Henry Wriothesley earl of Southampton; 127-152 to "Dark Lady"; 153-154 Greek epigram), The Phoenix and the Turtle, Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Autocrat of the Breakfast Table; The Chambered Nautilus (sea creature enlarges its shell as it grows), The Deacon's Masterpiece or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay (shay fell apart, satirizing Calvinist permanence), Elsie Venner A Romance of Destiny (Elsie Venner has serpentine qualities because mom was bitten by snake; loves Bernard Langdon but she dies), Old Ironsides (saved USS Constitution from being scrapped)

Old English

Beowulf (Denmark: Beowulf, a Geat, rescues King Hrothgar and the Danes from Grendel and his mother at Heorot in Zealand with sword Hrunting; fire-breathing dragon later kills Beowulf)

Charles DIckens

Bleak House (Chancery, London: narrator Esther Summerson, illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock and Captain Hawdon; lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn suspects past and is killed, as is Lady Dedlock; Krook spontaneously combusts; Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce case drags on for years in courts), Oliver Twist (Oliver born in workhouse and asked for more gruel; apprenticed by Mr. Bumble to undertaker Mr. Sowerberry; gang under Fagin including Jack Dawkins the Artful Dodger, Nancy, Bill Sikes, and Charley Bates tries to make Oliver a thief; half-brother Monks tries to corrupt him to get all of father's property; adopted by Mr. Brownlow and cared for by Mrs. Maylie and foster child Rose [his aunt]), David Copperfield (London: David Copperfield sent to Mr. Creakle's school by cruel stepfather Mr. Murdstone; idolizes classmate Steerforth; works in warehouse and lives with Mr. Micawber; runs away to great-aunt Betsey Trotwood; later lives with lawyer Mr. Wickfield; marries Dora Spenlow but she dies; unctuous Uriah Heep foiled; David marries Wickfield's daughter Agnes; other characters include reliable Traddles, "ever willin'" Barkis, and eccentric Peggotty family), Great Expectations (Philip Pirrip [Pip] raised by blacksmith Joe Gargery; meets convict Magwitch; visits Miss Havisham, who had been left at the altar years before, and her niece Estella; goes to London due to patron Magwitch, who is Estella's father; Estella's husband Bentley Drummle dies), Our Mutual Friend (Mr. Boffins and Wilfer's friend John Harmon left a fortune if he will marry Bella Wilfer; disguises self as John Rokesmith and falls in love with Bella and drops assumed name and gets fortune), Barnaby Rudge (Barnaby participates in anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 and sentenced to death but reprieved by Gabriel Varden; carries raven Grip with him; father murdered employer Mr. Haredale), A Christmas Carol (miser Ebinezer Scrooge, partner of deceased Marley, converted by visions of past, present, and future Christmases; sees the Cratchits, including Tiny Tim and Bob, Scrooge's secretary), A Tale of Two Cities (Dr. Alexander Manette, unjustly imprisoned in Bastille, is released and waits for rescuers in attic of Defarge's wine shop, and then returns to London with daughter Lucie; St. Evremonde's nephew Charles Darnay is accused of treason but defense counsel Stryver points out resemblance to Sydney Carton; Darnay marries Lucie and later returns to Paris to save a servant but is arrested during French Revolution; Sydney takes Charles's place on the guillotine because he loves Lucie), Dombey and Sons (Mr. Dombey wants son Paul to continue his business but he dies; ignored daughter Florence but later reconciled), Martin Chezzlewit (Martin Chezzlewit turned away by grandfather and goes to US with friend Mark Tapley; loses everything as architect for fraudulent Eden Land Corp; returns home and marries Mary Graham; Jonas Chuzzlewit poisons dad, murders Montague Tigg, and marries Mercy Pecksniff), Little Dorrit (William Dorrit raises kids Edward, Fanny, and Amy in debtor's prison; comes into fortune and all become despicable except Amy, who marries poor Arthur Clennam in Marshalsea prison; Arthur struggles with Circumlocution Office), The Pickwick Papers (pseudonym Boz; illustrated by Seymour; letters about club founded by Samuel Pickwick; "Pickwickian sense" means insults that aren't really meant; others include servant Sam Weller, landlady Mrs. Bardell, lawyers Dodson, Fogg, and Serjeant Buzfuz, and actor Alfred Jingle), Nicholas Nickleby (to support mom and sister Nicholas Nickleby works as usher for cruel Wackford Squeers, in Mr. Crummles theater, and Cheeryble counting house; sister Kate worked for milliner Mantalini; Uncle Ralph encourages Mulberry Hawk to seduce Kate; Gride loves Madeline Bray; Ralph learns mistreated Smike is his son and commits suicide; others include Ralph's clerk Newman Noggs), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (orphans Edwin Drood and Rosa Bud betrothed by fathers but break off engagement; Edwin murdered and Neville Landless is arrested but released; Edwin's Uncle Jasper pursues Rosa; Mr. Datchery investigates; unfinished), Hard Times (Thomas Gradgrind, a retired merchant, raises Louisa and Tom in grim practicality; Louisa marries Tom's employer Josiah Bounderby; Tom robs bank and frames Stephen Blackpool), The Old Curiosity Shop (Daniel Quilp takes over curiosity shop of Nell Trent's grandfather after he loses money gambling; Little Nell and grandfather work for Mrs. Jarley's Wax Works and Thomas Codlin's puppet show; given house by schoolmaster Mr. Marton and Little Nell tends graves; friend Kit

Tennesse Williams

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Big Daddy Pollitt is dying of cancer on MS Delta; son Gooper wants inheritance; other son Brick accuses his wife Maggie of causing his friend's death; Maggie says she is pregnant to help Brick get inheritance), The Glass Menagerie (St. Louis: Tom Wingfield narrates; mother Amanda asks Tom to bring a gentleman caller for crippled sister Laura, who has withdrawn to private universe of her glass animals; Laura temporarily emerges into real world when the horn of the glass unicorn breaks), A Streetcar Named Desire (New Orleans: faded belle Blanche DuBois comes to live with sister Stella and her husband Stanley Kowalski, who warns a friend not to marry Blanche and then rapes her; streetcars Desire and Cemetery run on same track), The Rose Tattoo (dressmaker Serafina Delle Rose's truckdriver husband is killed; 3 years later she marries truckdriver with tattoo on chest like husband did)

Joseph Heller

Catch-22 (Pianosa Island during WWII: Yossarian can only stop bombing missions if insane but wanting to stop is sane), Something Happened, Good as Gold Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance with

George Gordon Lord Byron

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Childe Harold goes on pilgrimage across Europe disillusioned with life of pursuing pleasure), Don Juan (Don Juan sent from Spain by mom Donna Inez; shipwrecks in Greece but nursed by Haidee; sold as slave to Gulbeyas of Constantinople but loves Dudu; attracts Empress Catherine in Russia; sent to England), The Corsair (pirate chief Conrad imprisoned by Sultan Seyd but released by Gulnare but finds his love Medora dead; returns to Greece and is shot), The Destruction of Sennacherib (plague in Assyrian army), The Prisoner of Chillon (two brothers of Francois de Bonnivard die in dungeon), Manfred (Count Manfred sells self to Prince of Darkness and lives alone in Alps)

University Wits

Christopher Marlowe - Robert Greene - A Groatsworth of Wit John Lyly Thomas Nashe Thomas Lodge George Peele

Thomas Paine

Common Sense, Crisis, Age of Reason (controversial book expounding deism), The Rights of Man (defends French Revolution)

Samuel Jonson

Dictionary of the English Language (refused belated patronage of Lord Chesterfield), Rasselas (Rasselas, sister Nekayah, and mentor Imlac escape Oriental Happy Valley to explore world; visit Cairo; return to Happy Valley), Lives of the Poets (connects lives and work of 52 poets from Cowley to his contemporaries), Rambler (semi-weekly essays)

John Locke

Essay Concerning Human Understanding (views mind at birth as tabula rasa with no innate ideas; led to growth of empiricism), Treatises on Government

Alexander Pope

Essay on Criticism ("little learning is a dangerous thing"; "to err is human, to forgive divine"), Essay on Man, Rape of the Lock (epic treatment of real incident in which Lord Petre cut a lock of Arabella Fermor's hair, leading to family feud; heroine Belinda), The Dunciad (attacks Pope's critics including Lewis Theobald; Colley Cibber king of the Dunces, and goddess Dullness prevails), Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (dialogue between Pope and a physician, attacking Addison and Hervey), ` translated Iliad

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Evangeline (Gabriel Lajeunesse sent to LA and Evangeline Bellefontaine to NE when Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia; meet again in Philadelphia where she is nurse and he dies) , Song of Hiawatha (Ojibway Indian Hiawatha raised by grandmother Nokomis, daughter of the moon; revenges mom Wenonah against dad West Wind; teaches peace with whites; wife Minnehaha becomes ill and they go to Northwest Wind), Courtship of Miles Standish (Plymouth Plantation: shy military man Miles Standish asks John Alden to woo Priscilla Mullins for him, but she marries John instead, and Miles gives blessing), translated the Divine Comedy,

JOhn Keats

Eve of St. Agnes (Madeline glimpses future husband Porphyro on Eve of St. Agnes), Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Endymion (shepherd on Mount Latmus loved by moon goddess Selene), Hyperion (Titan sun god Hyperion overthrown by Apollo), La Belle Dame snas merci, Isabella or The Pot of Basil (Isabella plants head of beloved Lorenzo in pot of basil after her brothers killed him), On First Looking into Chapman's Home

Edmund Spenser

Faerie Queene (planned 12 books for each private moral virtues; Prince Arthur sees vision of Faerie Queen Gloriana [Elizabeth I]; evil Catholics Duessa [Mary], Archimago, and Grantorto [Philip II]; 6 books: Red Cross Knight [Holiness], Sir Guyon [Temperance], Britomart [Chastity], Cambel and Triamond [Friendship], Artegal [Justice], Calidore [Courtesy]), The Shepheardes Calender (shepherd Colin Clout loves Rosalind)

Benjamin Franklin

General Magazine and Historical Chronicle (one of first two magazines, 1741), Autobiography, Poor Richard's Almanack (Richard Saunders)

Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness (1890 Belgian Congo, Congo River: narrator Marlowe searches jungle for powerful trader Kurtz; tells of exploitation of natives), Lord Jim (Jim abandons sinking Indian ship Patna, but the 800 Muslims are rescued; he lives in African trading post Patusan but his white friends betray him and murder Chief Doramin's son Dain Waris, and he is executed), The Secret Sharer, The Outcast of the Islands (Williems given native Aissa in return for throttling Almayer's trade), Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard (Charles Gould, owner of a silver mine in Costaguana South America, neglects wife Dona Emilia; during revolution, Gould puts "incorruptible" foreman Nostromo in charge of some silver; Nostromo buries it and is killed; others include Dr. Monygham and Paris reporter Martin Decourd), Almayer's Folly, The Ni*** of the Narcissus (black sailor James Wait dies of TB; Donkin tries to stir mutiny), The Secret Agent (Verloc persuades brother-in-law Stevie to blow up Greenwich Observatory, which he does and dies; Verloc killed by wife Winnie), Victory (wanderer Axel Heyst goes to South Seas with Lena; hotel manager Schomberg loves Lena and sends men to invade Heyst's sanctuary; Lena is killed), The Secret Sharer (captain takes on board a murderer who is his double), The Shadow Line (captain grows mature by taking ship through difficult calm), Typhoon (Captain MacWhirr brings Chinese passengers safely through tempest), Under Western Eyes (Razumov betrays Haldin, who assassinated an official, becomes spy in Geneva, loves Haldin's sister Nathalie, confesses to revolutionaries, is beaten, and is returned to Russia)

Cambridge Poets

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Evangeline (Gabriel Lajeunesse sent to LA and Evangeline Bellefontaine to NE when Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia; meet again in Philadelphia where she is nurse and he dies) , Song of Hiawatha (Ojibway Indian Hiawatha raised by grandmother Nokomis, daughter of the moon; revenges mom Wenonah against dad West Wind; teaches peace with whites; wife Minnehaha becomes ill and they go to Northwest Wind), Courtship of Miles Standish (Plymouth Plantation: shy military man Miles Standish asks John Alden to woo Priscilla Mullins for him, but she marries John instead, and Miles gives blessing), translated the Divine Comedy, My Lost Youth (youth in Portland ME), Village Blacksmith, The Building of the Ship, The Children's Hour, The Wreck of the Hesperus, Tales of a Wayside Inn (collection of poems in style of Canterbury Tales; includes Paul Revere's Ride, Elizabeth, The Battle of Carmilhan, Emma and Eginhard, The Saga of King Olaf) James Russell Lowell - The Biglow Papers, Harvard Commemoration Ode (in honor of Civil War dead), Among My Books, A Fable for Critics, edited the Atlantic Monthly Oliver Wendell Holmes - Autocrat of the Breakfast Table; The Chambered Nautilus (sea creature enlarges its shell as it grows), The Deacon's Masterpiece or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay (shay fell apart, satirizing Calvinist permanence), Elsie Venner A Romance of Destiny (Elsie Venner has serpentine qualities because mom was bitten by snake; loves Bernard Langdon but she dies), Old Ironsides (saved USS Constitution from being scrapped) John Greenleaf Whittier - (sometimes included in Cambridge Poets) Snow-Bound, Massachusetts to Virginia (anti-slavery), Barbara Frietchie, Maud Muller (judge and Maude meet; "It might have been"), Telling the Bees

Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre (governess Jane Eyre eventually marries employer Edward Rochester, who is married to an insane woman), Shirley (Yorkshire wool mill owner Robert Gerand Moore deals with worker strife; heroine Shirley Keeldar based on Emily Bronte)

Hartford Wits

John Trumbull - M'Fingal (American Revolution: Scotch-American Tory orator M'Fingal is tarred and feathered and repents) Timothy Dwight (grandson of Jonathan Edwards) - The Conquest of Canaan, The Triumph of Infidelity, Greenfield Hill Joel Barlow - Hasty Pudding

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Die, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou

Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Die, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Sir Walter Scott

Lady of the Lake (James Fitz-James, Knight of Snowden, loves Ellen, daughter of outlaw James of Douglas; local hero Roderick Dhu fights for Ellen, but she loves Malcolm), Ivanhoe (1100s England: Wilfred knight of Ivanhoe rejects Rebecca the Jewess and loves Rowena but dad Cedric wants her to marry Saxon Athelstane; Black Knight [Richard the Lion-Hearted], Knight Templar Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Locksley [Robin Hood] become involved; tournaments at Ashby-de-la-Zouche and Torquilstone), The Antiquary (William Lovel loves daughter of Arthur Wardour), The Bride of Lammermoor (Lord Ravenswood's son Edgar loves Lucy, daughter of William Ashton who has tricked his dad; Lucy forced to marry Frank Hayston), Guy Mannering (Guy Mannering predicts Harry Bertram will have crises at ages 5 and 21; sister Lucy cared for by Dominie Sampson; Harry befriends Mannering and marries his daughter Julia), The Lay of the Last Minstrel (families of Baron Henry of Cranstown and Lady Margaret of Bransome Hall feud), Peveril of the Peak (Cavalier Julian Peveril loves Roundhead Alice Bridgenorth; 1678 Popish Plot), Quentin Durward (Louis XI Scottish Guardsman Durward saves king's life in boar hunt and wins Isabell countess of Croye), Marmion A Tale of Flodden Field (Lord marmion rejects Constance and loves Lady Clare; he dies at Flodden Field), The Talisman (Sir Kenneth helps Richard I fight Saladin), Waverley Novels (32 novels published anonymously)

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes - The Weary Blues (Jesse B Simple)

James Fenimore Cooper

Last of the Mohicans (Alice and Cora Munro try to join father at Fort William Henry; opposed by Hurons under Magua; Uncas, his dad Delaware Chief Chingachgook, and Hawkeye [Natty Bumppo] oppose Hurons),

William Golding

Lord of the Flies (British schoolboys crash on uninhabited island; try to form organized society but revert to savagery), The Inheritors, The Spire, The Paper Men, Pincher Martin (shipwrecked man struggles to live on barren rock),

Thomas Malory

Le Morte d'Arthur (Arthurian Legend - Camelot: King Arthur [based on 6th century Celtic king, becomes king by pulling sword Excaliber from stone, dies on island of Avalon], Queen Guinevere [Arthur's wife], Lancelot [great knight, loved Guinevere], Percival [commits many gaucheries when first at Arthur's court but trained as knight and granted sight of Holy Grail], Tristan and Iseult [Cornish Tristan goes to Ireland to get princess Iseult for uncle King Mark but they drink potion that makes them love each other forever], Sir Gawain [beheads Green Night and allows retaliation, tempted to commit adultery with Lord Bertilak's wife], Igraine [Arthur's mom], Uther Pendragon [Arthur's father], Merlin [magician, tutors Arthur], Mordred [treacherous nephew, battles Arthur at Camlan], Sir Galahad [leads a quest for the Holy Grail], Sir Launfal [gets wealth from fairy; accused of insults by Guinevere], Morgan le Fay [sorceress sister and enemy of Arthur], Gareth, Kay [Arthur's often brash steward], Sir Ector [Arthur's foster father], Bedivere; empty Siege Perilous chair at Round Table; printed by William Caxton)

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (including When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, O Captain My Captain [both about Abraham Lincoln's death], and Song of Myself ["a uniform hieroglyphic" grass, "barbaric yawp", "look for me under your bootsoles", "origin of all poems", reading it is "good health"]), Drum-Taps, Democratic Vistas (alarmed at superficial US), Specimen Days & Collect, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, Song of the Open Road

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan (supports strong government to combat egoism, root of all social conflict)

William Wordsworth

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (ivory-covered ruin on river Wye in Monmouthshire), Ode: Intimations of Immortality (Platonic "recollection"; celebrates child), The Daffodils, The Recluse (including The Excursion), The Prelude (autobiographical), Simon Lee (poet helps hunter Simon dig up tree root), Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room

Louisa May Alcott

Little Women (Meg mares tutor John Brooke; Beth likes music but dies young; fashionable Amy marries Laurie; tomboyish and literary Jo marries German professor Mr. Bhaer), Little Men (Meg and John Brooke have twins Daisy and Demi), Jo's Boys (Jo and Mr. Bhaer turn their home into school for boys)

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Locksley Hall (last look at home of his youth; loves cousin Amy), In Memoriam (elegy for friend Arthur Hallam), Idylls of the King (King Arthur; The Coming of Arthur, Gareth and Lynette, Geraint and Enid, Merlin and Vivien, Lancelot and Elaine, The Holy Grail, Pelleas and Etarre, The Last Tournament, Guinievere, The Passing of Arthur), The Lotus-Eaters, The Lady of Shalott (Camelot: Lady of Shalott cannot engage real world directly), The Charge of the Light Brigade (Crimean War, Battle of Balaklava October 25 1854: 600 die following orders they know to be bad), Crossing the Bar (putting out to sea compared to death)

George Bernard Shaw

Man and Superman (Ann Whitefield pursues John Tanner, who talks with superman Don Juan and the Devil in Hell; others include chauffeur Henry Straker and bandit Mendoza), Adrocles and the Lion, Candida (Candida Morell stays with weak Christian Socialist clergyman husband rather than go with Eugene Marchbanks) Heartbreak House (WWI England: Ellie Dunn searches for husband among guests at sea captain's home; guests represent a modern evil; Boss Mangan [capitalist] killed by bomb; Ellie marries Capt. Shotover), Saint Joan (Joan of Arc surprised to become saint but offer to return is refused), Mrs. Warren's Profession (Mrs. Warren admits to daughter Vivie she is a madam), The Devil's Disciple (American Revolution: Dick Dudgeon allows himself to be executed in place of Parson Anderson), Back to Methuselah (5-parts from Garden of Eden to 1920 England to AD 31920), Pygmalion (phonetics Prof. Henry Higgins teaches Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle to speak like a lady; she loves him), Cesar and Cleopatra (giddy teenager Cleopatra loses charm under Caesar's tutelage), Arms and the Man (Bulgaria: mercenary Bluntschli takes Raina from Major Sergius; title from Aeneid; made into The Chocolate Soldier opera by Oskar Straus), Major Barbara (Salvation Army major Barbara refuses "tainted" money from armament company owner Undershaft [her dad] and a whisky dealer but comes to recognize poverty not sin causes crime), John Bull's Other Island (Irish Larry Doyle and English Tom Broadbent; Tom gains Larry's property and girlfriend because he is ambitious and Larry is reticent)

Virgina Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway (Clarissa Dalloway prepares to host a party; former love Peter Walsh shows up), To the Lighthouse (Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay host house party; guest Lily Briscoe is an artist; they plan to take a boat to the lighthouse the next day but son James is disappointed when weather prevents this; years later, after Mrs. Ramsay's death, Mr. Ramsay takes James to lighthouse in boat), Between the Acts (Miss La Trobe directs pageant of English history), Jacob's Room (Jacob Flanders studies at Cambridge, travels in Greece, dies in WWI) , Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (attacks Bennett, Galsworthy, and Wells), The Waves (6 kids raised together by sea; reunions with friend Percival in restaurant and at Hampton Court; storyteller Bernard, perfectionist Neville, vain Australian Louis, domestic Susan, flirtatious Jinnie, timid Rhoda), Orlando (Orlando starts as nobleman and becomes woman poet 300 years later), A Room of One's Own (feminist essay)

Robert Frost

North of Boston, Stopping by Woods on Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken (takes the one less traveled and "that has made all the difference"), The Gift Outright, Fire and Ice, Mending Wall (narrator's neighbor says "good fences make good neighbors"), A Boy's Will, Birches, The Death of the Hired Man (farmer and wife debate keeping returned hired man), A Further Range (including Ten Mills and Build Soil)

Emily Dickinson

Poems

Thornton Wilder

Our Town (Grover's Corners, NH: Stage Manager talks to audience; Professor Willard and Editor Webb commend on daily life; Webb's daughter Emily marries George Gibbs; Emily dies in childbirth), The Skin of Our Teeth (George Antrobus, his family, and temptress maid Sabina survive world upheavals throughout history, including Ice Age, Deluge, and WWII), The Matchmaker, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1714 Peru: Brother Juniper investigates death of 5 travelers on bridge), Theophilus North

John Milton

Paradise Lost (Raphael tells Adam about Satan's revolt and expulsion; Satans as serpent tempts Eve to eat forbidden fruit and Adam does also; Sin and Death enter world; Michael leads them out of Garden of Eden), Paradise Regained (Jesus resists Satan's temptations; suggested by Quaker Thomas Ellwood), Samson Agonistes (Samson betrayed by Delilah, blinded by Philistines, and destroys temple), Il Penseroso, Lycidas (commemorates death of schoolmate Edward King; title from shepherd in Bucolic), Areopagitica (pamphlet against restriction of freedom of the press), Comus (young lady left by two brothers in the woods captured by Comus, god of sensual pleasure)

Aldous Huxley

Point Counter Point (Philip Quarles [Huxley] writes novel; Mark Rampion [Lawrence] and wife Mary [Frieda]; Spandrell [Baudelaire] assassinates Everard Webley [Fascist Sir Oswald Mosley]; Denis Burlap [Murry] and Beatrice Gilray [Mansfeld]), Brave New World (632 After Ford: John is a savage from NM who believes in moral choice and commits suicide in new world of collectivism and passivity; title from the Tempest), After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (Jo Stoyte CA oil magnate visits 200-year old earl), Antic Hay (teacher Theodore Gumbril Jr quits to sell pants), Crome Yellow (Mrs. Wimbush and other eccentrics at a country house party), Heaven and Hell (effects of drug mescalin)

Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice (Mrs. Bennet tries to find matches for 5 daughters; Lydia Bennet elopes with officer Wickham; arrogant Mr. Darcy, who had interfered with courtship of friend Bingley and Jane Bennet, proposes to Elizabeth Bennet; she refuses but later her prejudice and his pride dissolve and they marry; also includes Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh), Emma (Emma Woodhouse interferes in love life of Harriet Smith, encouraging her to take Mr. Elton rather than Robert Martin; also interferes with Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill; eventually she marries George Knightley), Sense and Sensibility (Elinor Dashwood bears desertion by Edward Ferrars, who was secretly engaged to Lucy Steele and disinherited by mom, with dignity; Lucy turns to Edward's brother Robert when he gets inheritance and Edward proposes to Elinor; sister Marianne gets very upset about desertion by John Willoughby but finally marries Col. Brandon), Persuasion (Anne Elliott breaks engagement with Captain Wentworth but then they renew the engagement) Northanger Abbey (Mrs. Allen and Catherine Morland visit Bath; Catherine loves clergyman Henry Tilney but fears his home after reading Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho; they marry), Mansfield Park (Fanny Price raised with Uncle Thomas Bertram's 4 kids; Fanny loves cousin Edmund who loves Mary Crawford; Mary's brother Henry loves Maria Bertgram then Fanny Price then Maria again; Edmund finally marries Fanny)

Isaac Newton

Principia (The Motion of Bodies, The Motion of Bodies in Resisting Media, The System of the World)

Percy Brysshe Shelley

Prometheus Unbound (son Demogorgon drives Jupiter from throne; Hercules rescues Prometheus, who is reunited with wife Asia), Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Adonais (to Keats), The Cloud, Ozymandias (vanity of tyrants), The Sensitive Pl

John Updike

Rabbit Run (salesman Harry Angstrom leaves alcoholic wife Janice and child to find freedom but returns), Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest

Samuel Coleridge

Rime of the Ancient Mariner (seaman does penance for killing friendly albatross in Antarctic), Kubla Khan (Mongol emperor Kubla Khan; written during opium dream), Christabel (witch Lady Geraldine casts spell over Christabel and her father Sir Leoline, despite bard Bracy's revelatory dream)

Robin Hood

Robin Hood (Robin Hood, possibly earl of Huntington, born at Locksley Nottinghamshire; formed group in Sherwood Forest including Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, Allan-a-Dale, Will Stutly, and Maid Marian to rob rich and give to poor; opposed by sheriff; bled to death by prioress of Kirkley)

Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe (Robinson Crusoe [based on real-life Alexander Selkirk] is shipwrecked and lives 24 years on island near Orinoco River; saves native man Friday from cannibals and becomes his friend; recaptures ship and returns to England), Moll Flanders (Moll Flanders born at Newgate, works as prostitute, marries five times, sent to Virginia, died penitent), A Journal of the Plague Year (account of plague by Londoner "HF", 1665)

Alex Haley

Roots (many generations of slaves from Gambia, including Kunta Kinte)

Ray Bradbury

Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles

George Elliot

Silas Marner or the Weaver of Raveloe (weaver Silas Marner, long ago accused of theft committed by friend; robbed of his gold; finds abandoned yellow-haired baby Eppie whom he comes to love; Squire Cass's son Dunstan disappers; Dunstan's brother Godfrey marries Nancy Lammeter; Godfrey is actually Eppie's dad but she stays with Silas), Adam Bede (1700s England: Adam Bede loves Hety Sorrel but she loves Arthur Donnithorne), Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (Dorothea Brooke marries Rev. Mr. Casaubon, a scholar, who disillusions her and dies; she marries his cousin Will Ladislaw, forfeiting Casaubon's estate; Dr. Lydgate marries selfish Rosamond Vincy and loses his earlier medical ideals), Felix Holt the Radical (watchmaker Felix Holt loves Esther; Felix is pardoned for murder that prevented rioting; Esther chooses Felix over radical Parliament candidate Harold Transome), The Mill on the Floss (Tom Tulliver, raised at Dorlcote Mill, keeps sister Maggie from marrying Philip Wakem but she goes off with Stephen Guest, fianc� of her cousin Lucy Deane), Romola (Florentine Romola marries Tito Melema and finds peace with help of Savonarola)

Theodore Drieser

Sister Carrie (country girl Carrie Meeber saved from cruel 1890s Chicago by salesman Charles Drouet; George Hurstwood takes her to NY and she becomes actress but he kills self), Trilogy The Financier (magnate Frank Cowperwood watches lobster devour a squid; caught in stock crash and imprisoned; goes to Chicago to try again), The Titan (Frank Cowperwood marries Aileen Butler and tries to gain monopoly of utilities in Chicago; citizens foil plans and he goes to Europe with Berenice Fleming, daughter of a Louisville madam), The Stoic, An American Tragedy (Clyde Griffiths seduces Roberta Alden but loves Sondra Finchly; plans to murder Roberta but lacks the courage; fails to rescue Roberta when boat overturns; charged with murder; based on story of Chester Gillette and Grace Brown 1906)

Kurt Voneggut

Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade A Duty-Dance with Death (optometrist Billy Pilgrim survives Dresden firebombing and returns to Illium NY; kidnapped by aliens from Talfamadore who teach about 4D world), Cat's Cradle, Player Piano

William Faulkner

Soldiers' Pay, The Reivers, Sanctuary (Popeye rapes Temple Drake with corn cob and takes her to a Memphis brothel, but she protest him and testifies against Lee Goodwin, defended by Horace Benbow, and Goodwin is lynched), The Sound and the Fury (4 sections narrated by Compson family: idiot Benjy; Harvard student Quentin, whose ties with sister Caddy shattered by her loveless marriage; Jason, who keeps money Caddy sends to support daughter Quentin; black cook Dilsey), The Hamlet - The Town - The Mansion trilogy (Flem Snopes becomes part owner of Will Varner's store in Frenchman's Bend and marries his daughter Eula; becomes VP of bank in Jefferson and drives president Manfred De Spain from town; Gavin Stevens loves Eula and her daughter Linda), Go Down Moses (series of stories about McCaslin family in Yoknapatawpha County, including Was, The Fire and the Hearth, Pantaloon in Black, and The Bear [hunt for Big Ben]), Light in August (part-black Joe Christmas employed by Joe Brown has affair with Joanna Burden and kills her; Christmas is killed by mob; pregnant Lena Grove comes to Jefferson looking for her lover; Revereand Gail Hightower loses his church because of devotion to the past), Absalom Absalom (Thomas Sutpen elected colonel in Jefferson MS's Civil War regiment; daughter Judith's lover Charles Bon killed by Sutpen's son), As I Lay Dying (husband Anse and kids Cash, Darl, Jewel, Vardaman, and Dewey Dell carry body of Addie Bundren to Jefferson MS), A Fable (allegory of Jesus in WWI France), Knight's Gambit (stories involving Detective Gavin Stevens, including Monk), Requiem for a Nun (Temple Drake marries Gowan Stevens; Pete blackmails her; black servant Nancy Manningoe kills her youngest child, but Temple also is responsible), Intruder in the Dust (Chick Mallison, Aleck Sander, and Miss Eunice Habersham prove innocence of non-servile black Lucas Beuchamp), Sartoris (Col. John Sartoris's descendant Bayard returns from WWI guilty about brother John's death; grandfather dies of heart attack in car; Bayard marries Horace Benbow's sister Narcissa; Bayard dies as Ohio test pilot), The Unvanquished (7 stories about Sartoris family during Civil War; adventures of Bayard Sartoris and black companion Ringo), These Thirteen (short stories including A Rose for Emily [Southern spinster Emily Grierson locks Yankee construction worker Homer Barron, who courted her, in upstairs bedroom, where he dies])

WEB DU Bois

Souls of Black Folk, The Quest for the Silver Fleece

Alan Paton

South Africa, Cry the Beloved Country (Kumalo, Gertrude, Msimangu) ah but your land is beautifu (six parts)

Benjamin Disraeli

Sybil or the Two Nations, Tancred or the New Crusade

Jonathan Swift

Tale of a Tub (ridicule of religious extremists; brothers Peter [Catholic], Jack [Protestants], and Martin [Lutheran/Anglican]; Grub Street hacker writer reveals in Digression of Madness he is an inmate of Bedlam), Modest Proposal (satirically proposes raising Irish children for food), Gulliver's Travels (ship physician Lemuel Gulliver visits Lilliput [tiny people], Brobdingnag [giants], Laputa [scientists], and Houyhnhnmland [horses, masters of Yahoo people]), Battle of the Books (ridicules arguments of William Temple and Richard Bentley about ancient vs. modern authors; battle in St. James Library), Journal to Stella (diary)

Edgar Allen Poe

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (stories including The Fall of the House of Usher [narrator visits Roderick Usher; twin sister Madeline Usher emerges from burial vault; house and family destroyed] and Berenice), The Murders in the Rue Morgue (detective C. Auguste Dupin discovers a mother and daughter were murdered by an "Ourang-Outang"), The Pit and the Pendulum (victim of Spanish Inquisition escapes prison by falling into a pit; rats save him from knife-swinging pendulum; rescued by opposing army), The Purloined Letter (C. Auguste Dupin solves case of royal woman blackmailed by a cabinet minister on the basis of a compromising letter), The Raven (poet is startled by raven tapping at chamber door; raven perches on bust of Pallas Athene and answers questions about dead lover "Nevermore"), The Tell-Tale Heart (murderer hides body of victim under floor but hears a beating heart and confesses), Ulalume (narrator and his soul walk in woodland on Halloween following Venus and are stopped by door of forgotten tomb of beloved Ulalume), Annabel Lee, The Bells, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym (NE boy steals away on a whaler; drifts towards South Pole in a canoe), Ligeia (Ligeia dies and husband marries Rowena, who dies and turns into Ligeia), The Golden Bug (Sullivan's Island SC: William Le Grand discovers cipher telling of buried treasure, and drops beetle through one eye of a skull), The Masque of the Red Death (castle masquerade ball during Plague years: Prince Prospero), The City in the Sea

Cristopher Marlow

Tamburlaine (Scythian shepherd Tamburlaine becomes Persian king and marries Soldan's daughter Zenocrate), Dr. Faustus (Germany: scholar Faustus sells soul to devil), Jew of Malta (Barabas looses fortune and wants revenge on invading Turks; murders daughter and whole nunnery with poisoned porridge; dies in bubbling cauldron)

Henry James

The American (Christopher Newman, an unsophisticated American, loves Claire de Bellegarde but opposed by aristocratic family; he decides not to reveal her mom and brother murdered her father), The Aspern Papers (former mistress of poet Jeffrey Aspern won't let his poems be published), The Awkward Age (Nanda Brookenham and her mom love Vanderbank), The Bostonians (post-Civil War Boston: Olive Chancellor, a radical feminist, and Basil Ransom, a MS Confederate veteran, compete for Verena Tarrant; Miss Birdseye), Portrait of a Lady (Isabel Archer marries Gilbert Osmond in Italy; Isabel becomes disillusioned but stays to raise Pansy, daughter of Gilbert and Madame Merle), The Wings of the Dove (Kate Croy loves English journalist Merton Densher but gets him to marry dying friend Milly Theale to inherit her money; Densher cannot accept money or promise he doesn't love memory of Milly so Kate leaves), The Ambassadors (New England and France: Lambert Strether sent to Paris by fianc�e Mrs. Newsome to get her son Chad who loves Madame de Vionnet), The Golden Bowl (Prince Amerigo marries Maggie Verver but has affair with Maggie's friend Charlotte Stant; Charlotte marries Maggie's dad Adam Verver), The Turn of the Screw (governess, in love with employer, cares for orphans Miles and Flora, who are under evil influence of the ghosts of Peter Quint, ex-stewart, and Miss Jessel, ex-governess), Roderick Hudson (American sculptor Roderick Hudson, who loves Christina Light, goes to Rome and becomes disillusioned), The Princess of Casamassima (Princess Casamassima, formerly Christiana Light, studies poverty in London and meets radical Hyacinth Robinson), The Passionate Pilgrim and Other Stories (Clement Searle goes to England to claim rich estate but dies), The Spoils of Pynton (Owen Gereth refuses to marry Fleda Vetch so his mom removes art treasures from his house; he marries Mona Brigstock and offers Fleda art but house burns down), What Maisie Knew (12-year-old Maisie Farange spends 6 months with each of divorced parents, each of whom are remarried and having affairs again), Notes on Novelists, The Sacred Fount (older partner is refreshed and younger depleted in marriage), The Art of the Novel, Daisy Miller (narrator Frederick Winterbourne regrets rigid adherence to European conventions when Daisy Miller dies of Roman fever), The Europeans (artist Felix Young and his sister Baroness Munster visit relatives the Wentworths in Boston)

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American Scholar, Nature, Address at Divinity College (stressed Christ's humanity and man's divinity), Essays, Self-Reliance, Compensation (evil and good balance each other), Concord Hymn, Days, Merlin, The Over-Soul, Representative Men (Shakespeare, Plato, Goethe, Swedenborg, Napoleon, Montaigne)

John Donne

The Anniversaries (An Anatomy of the World, Of the Progresse of the Soule; in memory of Robert Drury's daughter Elizabeth), Devotions upon Emergent Occasion

Kate O'Flaherty Chopin

The Awakening

J. D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye (Holden Caulfield runs away from his prep school and drifts about NY), Franny and Zooey (college student Franny Glass and actor brother Zooey feel alienated)

Mark Twain

The Celbrated Jumping Fog of Calaveras County (Simon Wheeler narrators, Jim Smiley bets his frog Dan'l Webster can outjump any; stranger pours quail shot in frog), The Innocents Abroad (travel letters from Europe; burlesqued sentimental travel books), Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi (autobiographical; river loses its romance over 7 years), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Tom Sawyer, cared for by Aunt Polly, and friend Huck Finn witness murder by Injun Joe in cemetery but run away in fear to Jackson's Island; they return to witness their funerals; Tom testifies at trial of falsely accused Muff Potter; Tom and Becky Thatcher get lost in cave with Injun Joe but escape), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (narrated by Huck, who escapes from drunken father and journeys down Mississippi River with runaway slave Jim), Pudd'nhead Wilson (lawyer David Wilson exposes that Roxy's mulatto son murdered his uncle and accused Luigi), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Tom Sawyer Detective, The Gilded Age, The Mysterious Stranger (Satan disguised as Philip Traum disillusions boy in 1590 Eseldorf Austria), The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg (stranger leaves sack of money [actually lead] in a bank in Hadleyburg and sends letters to 19 telling them how to claim it), The Prince and the Pauper (Edward VI and pauper Tom Canty switch places for several days), 1601 ("Conversation as It Was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors")

Robert BUrns

The Cotter's Saturday Night (Jenny), The Holy Fair (sisters Fun, Usupersitition, and Hypocrisy visit Holy Fair at Mauchline), Tam o'Shanter (witches pursue Tam but cannot cross river Doon; Cutty Sark cuts off horse's tail)

Dame Agatha Christie

The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None (detective Hercule Peroit)

Stephen V. Benet

The Devil and Daniel Webster (NE farmer Jabez Stone sells his soul to the devil but is saved by Webster's oratory before demonic jury, John Brown's Body (Civil War narrative beginning with Harper's Ferry), Western Star

E. E. Cummings

The Enormous Room (WWI French concentration camp where Cummings was imprisoned on false treason charge)

O. Henry

The Four Million (title from NYC population; 25 stories including An Unfinished Story and The Gift of the Magi [poor man sells watch to buy combs for wife, who sells hair to buy watch fob for him]), The Last Leaf (ill girl decides to die when last of five leaves outside her window falls but one hangs) , A Retrieved Restoration (Jimmy Valentine tries to reform but foiled when he opens a safe during an emergency)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby (Jazz Age Long Island: Jay Gatsby loves Daisy Buchanan, cousin of narrator Nick Carraway, but she stays with husband Tom; Daisy runs over Tom's mistress Myrtle Wilson and Tom shoots Jay), Tender Is the Night (wealthy schizophrenic Nicole Warren marries her psychiatrist Dick Diver; she becomes mentally stable but he deteriorates; she leaves him for a lover), This Side of Paradise (spoiled Middle Westerner Amory Blaine goes to Princeton and joins literary cults; loves Rosaline Commase but is rejected; serves in WWI; starts career in advertising)

Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth (orphan Lily Bart loves Lawrence Seldon but reject him because he is poor; blackmailed and falsely accused by other men; becomes milliner and takes overdose of sleeping pills), The Age of Innocence (NY 1870s: Neland Archer marries May Welland but loves her cousin Ellen Olenska), Ethan Frome (MA farm: farmer Ethan Frome marries whining hypochondriac Zeena but loves her cousin Mattie; Ethan and Mattie injured in bobsled suicide attempt; Zeena becomes devoted nurse and Mattie becomes nag), The Custom of the Country (Undine Spragg samples pleasures, marries millionaire from hometown), Old New York (4 novellas about 1840 to 1880, including False Dawn [Lewis Raycie buys modern pictures], The Old Maid [Charlotte Lovell's cousin raises her illegitimate daughter Tina], The Spark [Walt Whitman influences old man], New Year's Day [wife sacrifices for sick husband])

Oscar Wilde

The Importance of Being Earnest (Jack Worthing loves Gwendolen Fairfax but her mom Lady Bracknell objects until she learns he is actually Ernest John Moncrieff, brother of Algernon Moncrieff; Jack had created imaginary younger brother Ernest for Cecily Cardew under tutelage of Miss Prism, who marries Algernon), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Basil Hallward paints portrait of Dorian Gray, which deteriorates instead of Dorian as he joins Lord Henry Wotton and sins; Dorian kills Hallward, stabs picture and dies), Salome, Lady Winderemere's Fan (Lady Windermere plans to leave husband for Lord Darlington because he loves Mrs. Erlynne, who turns out to be her mother, who rescues her reputation)

Upton Sinclair

The Jungle (Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus and wife Ono work in early 1900s Chicago stockyard)

Rudyard Kipling

The Jungle Book (Mowgli raised by wolves in Indian jungle), The White Man's Burden, Kim (Kimball O'Hara raised in Lahore and roams India with Tibet lama; joins English Secret Service), Captains Courageous (spoiled Harvey Cheyne shipwrecked but rescued by fishing trawler; must work for his keep, and learns self-reliance of a mariner), Mandalay, Recessional (60th anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession), Barrack-Room Ballads (celebrates British soldiers), The Man Who Was (man kept prisoner by Russians long after Crimean War), The Man Who Would Be King (white trader Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan take control of Kafristan but Daniel is killed and Peachey is tortured), Plain Tales from the Hills (short stories about Anglo-Indian life, including soldiers Otheris, Learoyd, and Mulvaney), Soldiers Three (more stories like Plain Tales from the Hills)

Bret Harte

The Luck of the Roaring Camp (miners adopt Thomas Luck, son of dying prostitute Cherokee Sal, but he dies in Kentuck's arms in flood), The Outcast of Poker Flat (gambler John Oakhurst, two prostitutes, and a drunkard sacrifice themselves in a blizzard to save young eloping couple)

Stephen Crane

The Red Badge of Courage (study of fear in US Civil War soldier Henry Fleming), Maggie A Girl of the Streets (Maggie Johnson in NY slums is seduced by bartender Pete, becomes a prostitute, and commits suicide), The Open Boat (captain, cook, oiler, and correspondent escape sinking ship on small boat; oiler dies as they come ashore), The Black Riders and Other Lines, War Is Kind (poems, including Do Not Weep Maiden for War Is Kind), Whilomville Stores (stories set in Port Jervis NY; in Lynx-Hunting Jimmie Trescott shoots a cow), The Blue Hotel (Swede comes to Nebraska looking for romantic violence), The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky (Sheriff Jack Potter, who has no gun, encounters Scratchy Wilson)

Thomas Hardy

The Return of the Native (Clym Yeobright opens school on Egdon Heath and marries Eustacia Vye, who loves Damon Wildeve, who married her cousin Thomasin; Clym's eyes fail and he becomes a furze cutter; Mrs. Yeobright comes to son's house but ignored by Eustacia and dies of fatigue and adder bite; Clym blames Eustacia who drowns with Wildeve; Thomasin marries Diggory Venn; Clym becomes preacher), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Tess Durbeyfield takes service with Mrs. D'Urberville, and has child with her son Alec; Tess becomes dairymaid and marries Angel Clare, but he leaves her because of her past; she returns to Tess but stabs him when Angel returns and is hanged), The Mayor of Casterbridge (drunk Michael Henchard sells wife Susan and daughter to sailor Newson; Michael reforms and becomes mayor; Susan and Neson's daughter Elizabeth-Jane returns; Donald Farfrae ruins Michael's fortunes, becomes mayor, and marries Elizabeth-Jane), Jude the Obscure (stonemason Jude Fawley marries Arabella who deserts him and their son; cousin Sue Bridehead marries teacher Phillotson but flees to Jude; Jude and Sue don't marry but have kids, who are killed by Arabella's son Father Time), Far from the Madding Crowd (Bathsheba Everdne marries adventurer Sergeant Troy, then engaged to William Boldwood who kills Troy, then marries Gabriel Oak), A Pair of Blue Eyes (former boyfriends of Elfride Swancourt Stephen Smith and Henry Knight meet on train but on arrival find her dead)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter (Salem: Hestor Prynne forced to wear A for committing adultery but won't reveal dad's name; physician husband Richard Chillingsworth suspects minister Arthur Dimmesdale, who dies after confessing; daughter Pearl finally cries), Twice-Told Tales (tales including Howe's Masquerade, The Grey Champion, The Great Carbuncle, and The Minister's Black Veil; title from King John), Mosses from an Old Manse (25 stories including Young Goodman Brown [Puritan Brown, led by old man, observes wife Faith at a witches' Sabbath in the woods and returns to Salem a sad man], The Birthmark [Aylmer removes birthmark from perfect wife Georgiana, killing her], Rappaccini's Daughter [doctor Rappaccini nourishes daughter Beatrice on poisons so she may help with dangerous plant experiments; she dies drinking antidote from faithless suitor], and The Celestial Railroad), House of the Seven Gables (Salem: Colonel Pyncheon obtained land for House of Seven Gables by accusing owner Matthew Maule of witchcraft; Maule cursed Pyncheons; Clifford Pyncheon jailed for murder of uncle actually committed by Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon; Phoebe and Holgrave, a descendant of Maule, fall in love and break the curse), Marble Faun (Italian count Donatello loves Miriam and kills her pursuer Antonio; artist Hilda witnesses murder, confesses to priest, and loves Kenyon), Blithedale Romance (based on Brook Farm; Miles Coverdale narrates; Zenobia loves Hollingsworth who loves Priscilla), Fanshawe (Fanshawe loves Ellen Langdon, ward of Harley College President Dr. Melmoth but gives her to man she loves and dies; modeled on Bowdoin), The Dolliver Romance (unfinished; Dr. Dolliver makes elixir to care for granddaughter Pansie but Colonel Dabney wants it for selfish reasons and dies), Tanglewood Tales

CS Lewis

The Screwtape Letters (devil Screwtape advises nephew Wormwood how to deal with humans), Problem of Pain, Mere Christianity, The Chronicles of Narnia (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magician's Nephew, The Last Battle; lion Aslan and 4 children who enter Narnia through a wardrobe save the country from a witch)

Jack London

The Sea Wolf (literary critic Humphrey Van Weyden is shipwrecked in SF Bay and rescued by Wolf Larsen on the Ghost, who makes him work as cabin boy; Maude Brewster also rescued; Ghost wrecks and blinded Larsen prevents its repair), The Call of the Wild (dog Buck taken from CA to Klondike; kills lead dog Spitz; owner John Thornton killed by Indians), White Fang (wolf-dog White Fang is abused by first owner but rescued and tamed by mining engineer Weedon Scott in CA; Fang defends Scott from convict), Martin Eden

Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises (Lost Generation 1925 France: journalist Jake Barnes narrates; Lady Brett Ashley is divorcing and may love Jake but plans to marry Michael Campbell and has affair with Spanish bullfighter Pedro Romero in Pamplona; others include Greek Bill Gorton and American-Jewish writer Robert Cohn), A Farewell to Arms (WWI ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry loves English nurse Catherine Barkley, who becomes pregnant; Henry deserts after Caporetto in Italy and they go to Switzerland, where she dies), In Our Time (short stories about Nick Adams, including Indian Camp and Big Two-Hearted River), Men Without Women (short stories including The Killers [Nick Adams warns Ole Andreson that two hired gunmen from city are coming to kill him], The Undefeated, Fifty Grand, Hills Like White Elephants, A Simple Inquiry), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Spanish Civil War: American professor Robert Jordan assigned by Pablo and Pilar to blow up a bridge; Jordan loves Maria for three days; Jordan carries out mission but is left to die; title from Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions), The Old Man and the Sea (Cuban fisherman Santiago catches marlin on 85th day but it is slowly eaten by sharks on way home), The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (English guide Wilson saves Macombers from lion on African safari; next day Macomber fights wild buffalo but wife shoots him), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (writer Harry goes on African safari to "work fat off his mind" but gets gangrene, sees vision of a frozen leopard, and dies), To Have and Have Not (Harry Morgan smuggles Chinese and liquor in Key West during Depression and is shot)

Hg Wells

The War of the Worlds (Martians invade England but are killed by bacteria; 1938 radio broadcast in US caused panic), The Time Machine (inventor visits stages in degeneration of life; ape-like Morlocks eat aristocratic Eloi; eventually only crabs remain), The Invisible Man, Kipps (Arthur Kipps comes into a fortune but only becomes happy when it is embezzled), The History of Mr. Polly (Mr. Polly burns down his house), The New Machiavelli, Tono-Bungay (George Ponderevo apprenticed to druggist uncle Edward who makes fortune from quack medicine Tono-Bungay; George becomes airplane designer)

TS Eliot

The Waste Land (5 sections explore psychic stages of a soul in despair; waste land contrasted with regeneration sources from the past; Medieval waste land ruler Fisher King cured by purifying knight), The Hollow Men (mixture of nursery rhyme and liturgy; emptiness of 1900s), Four Quartets (4 places: Burnt Norton, East Coker, Dry Salvages, Little Gidding), The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (shy Prufrock becomes introspective at a drawing room party), Murder in the Cathedral (Thomas Becket martyred at Canterbury on Dec. 29, 1170 by four knights of Henry II), The Cocktail Party (host Edward Chamberlayne marries Lavinia but has affair with Celia; psychiatrist Henry Harcourt-Reilly), Portrait of a Lady (woman and man trapped by dying social order but can't communicate), The Family Reunion (Harry Lord Monchensey murders wife and goes to his mom Amy's birthday party; wise aunt Agatha knows he is seeing the Eumenides, avenging furies), Tradition and the Individual Talent (poet must know past to write significant poetry)

Robert Louis Stevenson

Treasure Island (Jim Hawkins finds treasure map from sailor at mom's inn and goes on schooner Hispaniola with Dr. Livesey and Squire Trelaney to find it; Jim thwarts mutiny of Long John Silver; marooned sailor Ben Gunn helps them get treasure; blind villain Pew) The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Dr. Jekyll creates drug that transforms him into evil alter ego Mr. Hyde and eventually commits murder; kills self; narrated by Mr. Utterson), Kidnapped (Ebenezer puts nephew David Balfour on ship to Carolinas; David becomes friends with Jacobite Alan Breck; ship wrecks and they come ashore in Scotland), Weir of Hermiston (Archie Weir banished by judge father and loves Christina; novel unfinished), A Child's Garden of Verses (including My Shadow and The Lamplighter)

Geoffrey Chaucher

Troilus and Criseyde (Trojan prince Troilus pursues Cressida during Trojan War truce; Pandarus helps them get together; her dad exchanges her for a Trojan prisoner; Diomedes brings her to Greek camp and she is unfaithful, as Troilus's sister Cassandra predicted; Troilus sees Diomedes with brooch he gave Criseyde and fights him in battle but is killed by Achilles) House of Fame (finds engraving of Dido and Aeneas in Venus's Temple, lady Fame distributes fame and slander arbitrarily; unfinished), The Legend of Good Women (Queen Alceste has Chaucer write about 20 women who suffered or died because they were faithful in love, including Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Medea, Ariadne, and Philomela), The Book of the Duchess (elegy on death of John of Gaunt's wife Blanche of Lancaster, Halcyon and Ceyx story), The Parliament of Fowls (Scipio Africanus appears to younger Scipio in dream; on Valentine's Day 3 fowls fight over formel eagle), Canterbury Tales (Tabard Inn in Southwark, pilgrimage to St. Thomas a Becket shrine in Canterbury: tales told by Prioress [schoolboy sings hymn about Mary in Jewish ghetto and has throat cut but is saved by Mary, who commands him to sing until a grain is removed from his tongue], Monk [17 8-line tragedies including Bernabo of Milan, Ugolino, Pedro of Spain, Pedro of Cyprus, Lucifer, Adam, Samson, Heracles, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Zonobia, Nero, Holofernes, Antiochus, Alexander, Caesar, and Croesus], Friar [Summoner and Devil swear friendship], Knight [Theseus defeats Creon at Thebes; Arcite dies after winning tournament for the hand of Hippolyta's sister Emily and his cousin Palamon marries her], Melibee [Melibee forgives 3 enemies who beat his wife Prudence and killed his daughter Sophie], Miller [carpenter John's wife Alison scorns Absolon but loves Nicholas, who convinces John to suspend three tubs in the attic in preparation for a second Flood; Absolon brands Nicholas's rump], Man of Law [mom of Sultan of Syria puts Constance adrift; washed ashore in Northumberland and marries King Alla], Wife of Bath [used tricks to keep first 4 husbands in hand; married 5th for love, but after a fight he let her run everything; foul witch tells Arthur's knight what women most desire is sovereignty over husbands and makes him marry her; he gives her choice of beauty or fidelity and gets both], Physician [Virginia killed by judge father, whom Apius condemns to hanging but people revolt and the judge commits suicide], Pardoner [3 revelers want to slay Death, who killed their friend with plague; find treasure under tree; stab and poison each other over the gold], Nun's Priest [fox Don Russell seizes rooster Chauntecleer, as he had dreamed, but had been mocked by wife Pertelote], Parson [description of Confession, 7 Deadly Sins, and Penitence; Chaucer's Retractions], Reeve [miller Simkin steals grain from scholars John and Alan, who spend the night at his house and sleep with his wife and daughter], Manciple [archer Phebus's white crow tells him his wife had affair; he kills her but then turns against the tattle-tale crow], Merchant [knight January's sight restored but his wife May has affair with Damyan], Second Nun [Cecilia converts husband Valerian and his brother Tiburtius; Almachius tries to make them sacrifice to Jupiter but they refuse and are executed], Shipman [monk John spends night with merchant's wife; John gets loan from merchant], Squire [knight brings gifts on birthday of Tartar king Cambuscan; Cambuscan's daughter Canacee wears ring that lets her talk to a falcon], Canon's Yeoman [describes futility of alchemy], Clerk [Marquis Walter marries Griselda and tests her loyalty], Roger the Cook [apprentice Perkin likes dice and women], Franklin [Aurelius removes all rocks from British coast to win Arveragus's wife Dorigen])

Herman Melville

Typee A Peep at Polynesian Life (hero and friend Toby jump ship in Marquesas Islands and wander into valley of Typee where cannibals capture them; Fayaway nurses hero but he chooses to return to civilization), Omoo A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (crew of Julia is imprisoned on Tahiti; hero and fried Doctor Long Ghost are released and explore the island), Mardi and a Voyage Thither (5 men sail through Mardi on King Media's boat; stop in Vivenza [US]; Taji kills priest Aleema to rescue Yillah; Hautia seeks Taji; others include philosopher Babbalanja, poet Yoomy, and historian Mohi), Moby-Dick or the White Whale (monomaniacal Captain Ahab pursues Moby-Dick; others on the Pequod include God-fearing Starbuck, Stubb, harpooners Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, black Pip, and fire-worshipping Parsee; only narrator Ishmael survives), Pierre or the Ambiguities (writer Pierre Glendinning leaves mom and fianc�e Lucy Tartan for illegitimate sister, whom he comes to love; commits suicide in prison), White Jacket or The World in a Man-of-War (white jacket nearly drowns narrator when he falls into water; Jack Chase appears on US Navy man-of-war; brutal floggings condemned) Billy Budd Foretopman (Claggart falsely accuses Billy; Billy kills Claggart; Captain Vere reluctantly hangs Billy), Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, Clarel A Poem and A Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (theological student Clarel loves Jew Ruth while in Holy Land), The Confidence-Man His Masquerade (Fidele MS River boat on April Fool's Day; no plot), The Piazza Tales (short stories including The Bell Tower [artist Bannadonna rivals God], The Lightning-Rod Man [man refuses to buy lightning-rod because he does not control or fear God], The Enchanted Isles [sketches based on Galapagos Islands], Benito Cerreno, Bartleby the Scrivener [Bartleby refuses to do his job proofreading legal documents, is imprisoned, and starves]),

Gaelic

Ulster Cycle (sagas about Deirdre [daughter of King Conchobar's storyteller Felim destined to be beautiful and bring death; she is raised by Lavarcham in woods; falls in love with Conchobar's nephew Naisi and flees to Alba with his brothers; they are persuaded to return and Usnech's sons are killed and Deirdre commits suicide], Cu Chulainn [son of sun god Lugh, Cu Chulainn kills hound but takes its place until owner gets new one; trained by woman warrior Scathach; subdues Aoife and has son Conlaoch by her; Conlaoch returns later and kills many but is killed by Cu; Cu fights army of Queen Maeve; seduced by sea god Mananaan's wife Fand; Queen Medb of Cruachain creates imaginary host whom Cu fights to exhaustion and dies tied to pillar; wife Emer dies with him], King Conchobar, Medb and Ailill, Fergus, Cu Roi, Finnabair, Noisi, Emer, Bricriu Poison-tongue, Cathbad the Druid, Etain, Da Derga, Mac Datho, Conaire, and Conall Cernach; includes tale Cattle-Raid of Cooley [Cu Chulainn deters army of Queen Maeve while Red Branch warriors of Ulster awaken; duels and kills foster brother Ferdiad])

James Joyce

Ulysses (describes June 16, 1904 in the lives of Jewish advertisement canvasser Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and Stephen Dedalus; parallels Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus; Leopold and Stephen experience exile) Finnegans Wake (presents dreams of the Earwicker family, including Protestant tavern- keeper Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, wife Anna, and kids Isobel, Kevin, and Jerry; divine, heroic, human, and confusion ages), Dubliners (short stories of middle-class Catholics who have epiphanies, including Clay [Maria goes to family party], The Dead [Irish college teacher Gabriel Conroy and wife Gretta at Christmas dance], and The Sisters [boy confronted with death and learns priest is insane]), Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Stephen Dedalus grows up and leaves Dublin for Paris to become writer), Chamber Music (poems)

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Life Among the Lowly (Vermonter plantation owner Simon Legree beats slave Uncle Tom to death; Uncle Tom cared for owner Augustine St. Clare's daughter Little Eva; others include mulatto Eliza, impish black child Topsy, Miss Ophelia St. Clare, and slave catcher Marks)

Sir Thomas More

Utopia (Book I dialogue analyses ills in England; Book II describes Utopia, run with humanist ideals)

William Makepeace Thackeray

Vanity Fair a Novel without a Hero (Becky Sharp tries to win friend Amelia Sedley's rich brother Joseph but fails; marries Sir Pitt Crawley's son Rawdon, who is disinherited, but she lives well on small income with Lord Steyne's help until Rawdon finds out and leaves Becky and son to become governor of Coventry Island; Becky is ostracized; Amelia marries George Osborne but he dies at Waterloo and his dad Mr. Osborne cares for their son Georgy; Amelia marries William Dobbin), The Newcomes (Col. Thomas Newcome's artist son Clive marries Rosey Mackenzie and then cousin Ethel Newcome), The History of Henry Esmond Esquire (Henry Esmond raised by Francis Esmond, heir of Castlewood estate; James Edward the Pretender loves Francis's daughter Beatrix; Henry marries Rachel and goes to America), The Virginians (sequel to Henry Esmond; Henry's grandsons George and Harry Warrington grow up under aunt Baroness Bernstein in America; George fights for British and Harry for friend Washington in Revolution), The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon Esq. Written by Himself (Redmond Barry wins Countess Lyndon and spends her money, ending up in Fleet Prison), The History of Pendennis (Arthur Pendennis [Pen] spoiled by mom and relative Laura Bell; writes novel; edits Pall Mall Gazette; marries Laura), The Rose and the Ring (Fairy Blackstick controls magic rose and ring that make owner lovely)

Ben Jonson

Volpone (childless Venetian nobleman Volpone [Fox], aided by servant Mosca [Fly], pretends to be sick so that many will rush to him with rich gifts to ensure he is in line to inherit forture; visitors include lawyer Voltore [Vulture], miser Corbaccio [Crow] who disinherits son, and Corvino [Raven] who offers his wife) The Alchemist (Subtle and Doll Common set up shop in Lovewit's house while he is gone; they trick Face and Sir Epicure Mammon but not Surly), Everyman in His Humour (London: Wellbred and Young Kno'well escape brother-in-law and father; Captain Bobadil [braggart], Kitely [jealous], Stephen [stupid], Kno'well [suspicious], Dame Kitely [jealous] humours) Epicene or The Silent Woman (Morose tries to disinherit his nephew Sir Dauphine by marrying silent Epicene, who turns out to be talkative boy in disguise), The Poetaster (attacks Thomas Kekker and John Marston in War of Theaters)

Samuel Beckett

Waiting for Godot (tramps Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot to come but he never does; Pozzo mistreats his servant Lucky), How It Is, Krapp's Last Tape (Krapp ridicules tapes of his youthful monologues), Three Novels (Malone Dies, Molloy [cripples searches for his mom; official Moran searches for the cripple], The Unnamable[narrator lives legless and armless in large jar outside a restaurant])

Henry David Thoreau

Walden or Life in the Woods (about simple life near Concord NH), Civil Disobedience ("that government is best which governs least"), Life Without Principle

George Kaufmann

You Can't Take It with You (written with Moss Hart; happy but bizarre NY Vanderhof family), Of Thee I Sing (Presidential candidate John Wintergreen campaigns on love platform and marries Atlantic City beauty contest winner)

Bertrand Russell

l - Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, The Analysis of Mind, An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, Has Man a Future?, Unarmed Victory