The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is a legend in which a piper, hired as a rat-catcher, wreaks a clever revenge when the townspeople refuse to pay for his services. Here is Robert Browning’s poetic...
Category: Excellence in Literature: The Curriculum
The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
THE SECOND COMING by William Butler Yeats [This is the 1920 edition, as printed in Michael Robartes and the Dancer.] Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things...
Charlotte’s Introduction to Wuthering Heights
This introduction to Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Brontë explains why she, Emily, and Anne had initially published under a pseudonym, and touchingly relates the story of her sisters’ brief lives.
Robert Browning Poetry
Robert Browning Poetry Robert Browning (1812-1889) was an English poet, known for his dramatic verse. Considered one of the foremost poets of the Victorian era, Browning was born the same year as Charles Dickens....
Elizabeth Barrett Browning Poetry
Here are few selections from Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of 44 love sonnets by English Victorian poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She was well appreciated during her lifetime, and her work inspired other writers, including Emily...
John Keats Poetry
Although poet John Keats wrote only 54 poems before he died at the age of 25, he is remembered as one of the outstanding English Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe...
Percy Bysshe Shelley Poems
Index of Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was a Romantic poet whose contemporaries included Keats and Byron. Although famous for his long work Prometheus Unbound, his genius also shines in...
Poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was a Romantic poet and writer in the Gothic literary tradition. He was a friend of William Wordsworth Coleridge also wrote about philosophy, literature, theology, and science. You...
William Wordsworth Poems
Poems by William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was an English Romantic poet whose work celebrated the connection between man and nature. He was friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and became poet laureate in 1843....
John Milton Poems
Poems by John Milton John Milton (1608–1674) was an English writer of prose and poetry, as well as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell. He is best known for...
George Herbert Poetry
Poems by George Herbert (1593–1633) George Herbert was a 17th-century British poet, now recognized as one of the best devotional poets in the English language. You may read two of his poems available from...
Modernism and Experimentation: 1914-1945 — Outline of American Literature Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Outline of American Literature Modernism and Experimentation: 1914-1945 Historians characterize this period as U.S.’ traumatic “coming of age.” By Kathryn VanSpanckeren Introduction & Overview Modernism Poetry 1914-1945: Experiments in Form: Ezra Pound, T.S....
Paul Laurence Dunbar Poetry
Poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 – 1906) was an African-American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been slaves in Kentucky before the...
The Rise of Realism: 1860-1914: Outline of American Literature Chapter 5
Chapter 5: Outline of American Literature by Kathryn VanSpanckeren The Rise of Realism: 1860-1914 This chapter features a brief overview of the realist movement, and brief biographies of writers such as Mark Twain, Edith...
Mark Twain’s Autobiography
Ask a humorist to write his autobiography, and you just might end up with a short story such as Mark Twain’s Burlesque Autobiography. This short story is entirely fictional, and is not intended to...
America by Herman Melville
Although Herman Melville is best known as the author of Moby Dick, from which sprang one of the best first sentences in literature — “Call me Ishmael.”— he also wrote poetry, essays, and travel...
Ralph Waldo Emerson Poems
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was an American transcendentalist poet and writer. A native of Boston, he lived most of his life in that region of Massachusetts, and his book Nature inspired Henry David Thoreau,...
Poetry by Oliver Wendell Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr (1809-1894), a professor of anatomy at Harvard University, wrote poetry as a hobby. Some of his most memorable poems tell historical stories. In both his life and his work, he...
Poetry by John Greenleaf Whittier
Poetry by John Greenleaf Whittier John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892), often listed as one of the Fireside Poets, was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Enjoy Whittier’s poetry available from...
Elegy for Hawthorne by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In poetry, an elegy is a reflective poem, usually a lament for the dead. In this elegy for American poet and author Nathaniel Hawthorne, his friend and college classmate, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow mourns his...
Hawthorne and His Mosses by Herman Melville
Hawthorne and His Mosses By Herman Melville From The Literary World, August 17 and 24, 1850 [with the original creative spelling] By a Virginian Spending July in Vermont A papered chamber in a fine...
My Brigantine by James Fenimore Cooper
My Brigantine by James Fenimore Cooper MY brigantine! Just in thy mould and beauteous in thy form, Gentle in roll and buoyant on the surge, Light as the sea-fowl rocking in the storm, In...
James Fenimore Cooper: Cambridge History
James Fenimore Cooper Cambridge History of American Literature (1917-1921), Book II, Chapter VI by Carl Van Doren James Fenimore Cooper: Youth, Naval Career Precaution The Spy The Pioneers The Pilot The Last of the...
In the Churchyard at Tarrytown by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In the Churchyard at Tarrytown [written to honor Washington Irving at the time of his death] by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Here lies the gentle humorist, who died In the bright Indian Summer of his...
To the Lighthouse Study Guide
Study Guide for To the Lighthouse © by Cathy Decker, 1998 In this study guide by Dr. Cathy Decker, a professor from Chaffey College (CA), you’ll find questions you might want to consider when you read...
Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses by Mark Twain
It is likely that the literary offenses of James Fenimore Cooper are no more dire than the offenses of at least half the authors represented in a modern bookstore, but Mark Twain certainly enjoyed humorously critiquing...
A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A PSALM OF LIFE WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul...
Benjamin Franklin 13 Virtues
An Excerpt from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Illustrated by E. Boyd Smith; edited by Frank Woodworth Pine, 1916 IX. PLAN FOR ATTAINING MORAL PERFECTION T was about this time I conceived the bold...
The Road to Independence: Chapter 3 Outline of U.S. History
Outline of American History (a publication of the U.S. State Department) Chapter 3: The Road to Independence Rebellion that made a new nation “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was...
Meet Benjamin Franklin by Stephen Kaufman
Meet Benjamin Franklin, America’s First International Celebrity His range of interests and influence still astonishing after 300 years By Stephen Kaufman, 07 January 2006 Without inherited wealth or social position, the 10th son of...
