Portal:Literature

The Literature Portal

Introduction

The Library of the Palais Bourbon in Paris

Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.

Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject. (Full article...)

General images -

The following are images from various literature-related articles on Wikipedia.

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  Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 CE. (from History of books)
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  A poet with a few enraptured fans (from Performance poetry)
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  The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, c. 1275 BCE, ink and pigments on papyrus, in the British Museum (London) (from History of books)
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  Chinese Bookseller, illustration, c. 1824 (from History of books)
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  Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books)
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  A Sumerian clay tablet, currently housed in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, inscribed with the text of the poem Inanna and Ebih by the priestess Enheduanna, the first author whose name is known
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  Statue of Minnie the Minx, a character from The Beano. Launched in 1938, the comic is known for its anarchic humour, with Dennis the Menace appearing on the cover. (from Children's literature)
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  The Violet Fairy Book (1906)
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  An author portrait of Jean Miélot writing his compilation of the Miracles of Our Lady, one of his many popular works. (from History of books)
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  A 15th-century Incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (from History of books)
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  The first page of Beowulf (from Medieval literature)
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  Folio from a manuscript of the Shanamah (Book of Kings) (from History of books)
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  A Tagore illustration of a Hindu myth (from Children's literature)
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  European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books)
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  Pages from the 1819 edition of Kinder- und Haus-Märchen by the Brothers Grimm (from Children's literature)
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  The European fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in a painting by Carl Larsson in 1881. (from Fairy tale)
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  Goethe's Italian Journey between September 1786 and May 1788 (from Travel literature)
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  Estimated medieval output of manuscripts in terms of copies (from Medieval literature)
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  Charles G. D. Roberts was a poet that belonged to an informal group known as the Confederation Poets. (from Canadian literature)
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  In 1901, French poet and essayist Sully Prudhomme (1839–1907) was the first person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "in special recognition of his poetic composition, which gives evidence of lofty idealism, artistic perfection, and a rare combination of the qualities of both heart and intellect." (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  Hemingway's telegram in 1954 (the academy has alternately used for Literature and in Literature over the years, the latter becoming the norm today) (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  Galway Kinnell performing a poetic piece in Vermont (from Performance poetry)
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  Beauty and the Beast, illustration by Warwick Goble (from Fairy tale)
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  Sculpture of Alfonso Reyes writer of influential pieces of Mexican surrealism. (from Latin American literature)
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  The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) is a canonical piece of children's literature and one of the best-selling books ever published. (from Children's literature)
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  Hugo Ball performing at the Cabaret Voltaire (from Performance poetry)
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  Two people dressed up in costumes inspired by Willy Wonka (from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and the Hatter (from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) in London (from Children's literature)
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  A twentieth-century copyright imprint from McLoughlin Bros that features three rams and the copyright year, 1903 (from History of books)
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  The scene in Botticelli's Madonna of the Book (1480) reflects the presence of books in the houses of richer people in his time. (from History of books)
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  A mother reads to her children in a mid- to late 19th century lithograph by Jessie Willcox Smith. (from Children's literature)
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  Handwritten notes by Christopher Columbus on a Latin edition of The Travels of Marco Polo (from Travel literature)
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  Gabriel García Márquez, one of the most renowned Latin American writers (from Latin American literature)
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  Newbery's A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, originally published in 1744 (from Children's literature)
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  The New England Primer (from Children's literature)
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  Octavio Paz helped to define modern poetry and the Mexican personality. (from Latin American literature)
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  Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books)
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  An early Mexican hornbook pictured in Tuer's History of the Horn-Book, 1896. (from Children's literature)
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  The Codex Manesse, a German book from the Middle Ages (from History of books)
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  J. K. Rowling reads from her novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (from Children's literature)
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  European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books)
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  Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books)
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  1900 edition of the controversial The Story of Little Black Sambo (from Children's literature)
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  12-metre-high (40 ft) sculpture of a stack of books at the Berlin Walk of Ideas, commemorating the invention of modern book printing (from History of books)
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  The oldest known love poem. Sumerian terracotta tablet#2461 from Nippur, Iraq. Ur III period, 2037–2029 BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul (from History of poetry)
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  An early Chinese poetics, the Kǒngzǐ Shīlùn (孔子詩論), discussing the Shijing (Classic of Poetry) (from History of poetry)
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  Peruvian poet César Vallejo, considered by Thomas Merton "the greatest universal poet since Dante" (from Latin American literature)
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  The character which means "poetry", in the ancient Chinese Great Seal script style. The modern character is 詩/诗 (shī). (from History of poetry)
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  French author Albert Camus was the first African-born writer to receive the award. (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  Father Frost acts as a donor in the Russian fairy tale Father Frost, testing the heroine before bestowing riches upon her (from Fairy tale)
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  Statue of C. S. Lewis in front of the wardrobe from his Narnia book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (from Children's literature)
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  Statuta Mutine Reformata, 1420–1485; parchment codex bound in wood and leather with brass plaques worked the corners and in the center, with clasps. (from Medieval literature)
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  Ivan Bilibin (1876–1942)'s illustration of the Russian fairy tale about Vasilisa the Beautiful (from Fairy tale)
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  The Crescent Moon by Rabindranath Tagore illus. by Nandalal Bose, Macmillan 1913 (from Children's literature)
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  Roberto Bolaño is considered to have had the greatest United States impact of any post-Boom author (from Latin American literature)
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  Illustration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865 (from Children's literature)
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  Postal stamp of Russia celebrating children's books. (from Children's literature)
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  Gabrielle Roy was a notable French Canadian author. (from Canadian literature)
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  Hop-o'-My-Thumb and the ogre in an 1865 illustration (from Fairy tale)
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  Dresden Codex (page 49) (from History of books)
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  Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, London (from Children's literature)
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  Number of children's books titles published by the trade sector in 2020 (from Children's literature)
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  Natias Neutert performing Diogenes Synopsis as at Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, 1986 (from Performance poetry)
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  Page from the Blue Quran manuscript, ca. 9th or 10th century CE (from History of books)
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  A picture by Gustave Doré of Mother Goose reading written (literary) fairy tales (from Fairy tale)
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  John Bauer's illustration of trolls and a princess from a collection of Swedish fairy tales (from Fairy tale)
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  Short story writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. (from Canadian literature)
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  Illustration from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 pirate adventure Treasure Island (from Children's literature)
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  Cutlery for children. Detail showing fairy-tale scenes: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel. (from Fairy tale)
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  A late 18th-century reprint of Orbis Pictus by Comenius, the first children's picture book. (from Children's literature)
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  Walter Crane's chromolithograph illustration for The Frog Prince, 1874. (from Children's literature)
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  The former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke (2015) (from Canadian literature)
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  Kings' Fairy Tale, 1909, by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (from Fairy tale)
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  The philosopher Confucius was influential in the developed approach to poetry and ancient music theory. (from History of poetry)
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  European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (from History of books)
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  H. O. Tanager performs at a bookstore in Boise, Idaho. (from Performance poetry)
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  Calliope, the muse of heroic poetry (from History of poetry)
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  A Chinese bamboo book (from History of books)
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  Jikji, Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Seon Masters, the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. (from History of books)
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  The Story of Mankind (1921) by Hendrik van Loon, 1st Newbery Award winner (from Children's literature)

Selected work

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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"Big Two-Hearted River" is a two-part short story written by American author Ernest Hemingway, published in the 1925 Boni & Liveright edition of In Our Time, the first American volume of Hemingway's short stories. It features a single protagonist, Hemingway's recurrent autobiographical character Nick Adams, whose speaking voice is heard just twice. The story explores the destructive qualities of war which is countered by the healing and regenerative powers of nature. When it was published, critics praised Hemingway's sparse writing style and it became an important work in his canon.

The story is one of Hemingway's earliest pieces to employ his Iceberg Theory of writing; a modernist approach to prose in which the underlying meaning is hinted at, rather than explicitly stated. "Big Two-Hearted River" is almost exclusively descriptive and intentionally devoid of plot. Hemingway was influenced by the visual innovations of Cézanne's paintings and adapted the painter's idea of presenting background minutiae in lower focus than the main image. In this story, the small details of a fishing trip are explored in great depth, while the landscape setting, and most obviously the swamp, are given cursory attention.

Selected biographies -

Featured articles are displayed here.

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  Andrade in 1928

  
  Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈmaɾiu ʁaˈu dʒi moˈɾajs ɐ̃ˈdɾadʒi]; October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. He wrote one of the first and most influential collections of modern Brazilian poetry, Paulicéia Desvairada (Hallucinated City), published in 1922. He has had considerable influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist—he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology—his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.
  
  Andrade was a central figure in the avant-garde movement of São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism. His photography and essays on a wide variety of subjects, from history to literature and music, were widely published. He was the driving force behind the Modern Art Week, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the visual arts in Brazil, and a member of the avant-garde "Group of Five". The ideas behind the Week were further explored in the preface to his poetry collection Pauliceia Desvairada, and in the poems themselves. (Full article...)
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  Meeker in 1921

  
  Ezra Morgan Meeker (December 29, 1830 – December 3, 1928) was an American pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon as a young man, migrating from Iowa to the Pacific Coast. Later in life he worked to memorialize the Trail, repeatedly retracing the trip of his youth. Once known as the "Hop King of the World", he was the first mayor of Puyallup, Washington.
  
  Meeker was born in Butler County, Ohio, to Jacob and Phoebe Meeker. His family relocated to Indiana when he was a boy. He married Eliza Jane Sumner in 1851; the following year the couple, with their newborn son and Ezra's brother, set out for the Oregon Territory, where land could be claimed and settled on. Although they endured hardships on the Trail in the journey of nearly six months, the entire party survived the trek. Meeker and his family briefly stayed near Portland, then journeyed north to live in the Puget Sound region. They settled at what is now Puyallup in 1862, where Meeker grew hops for use in brewing beer. By 1887, his business had made him wealthy, and his wife built a large mansion for the family. In 1891, an infestation of hop aphids destroyed his crops and took much of his fortune. He later tried his hand at a number of ventures, and made four largely unsuccessful trips to the Klondike, taking groceries and hoping to profit from the gold rush. (Full article...)
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  Tolkien in the 1920s

  
  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL (/ˈruːl ˈtɒlkiːn/, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
  
  From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford. He then moved within the same university to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, and held these positions from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972. (Full article...)
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  Posthumous portrait

  
  Du Fu (Chinese: 杜甫; Wade–Giles: Tu Fu; 712–770) was a Chinese poet and politician during the Tang dynasty. Together with his elder contemporary and friend Li Bai, Du is often considered one of the greatest Chinese poets. His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successful civil servant, but Du proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like all of China, was devastated by the An Lushan Rebellion of 755, and his last 15 years were a time of almost constant unrest.
  
  Although initially he was little-known to other writers, his works came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese literary culture. Of his poetic writing, nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages. He has been called the "Poet-Historian" and the "Poet-Sage" by Chinese critics, while the range of his work has allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as "the Chinese Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Béranger, Hugo or Baudelaire". (Full article...)
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  Amir Hamzah, c. 1928–1937

  
  Tengku Amir Hamzah (February 1911 – 20 March 1946) was an Indonesian poet and National Hero of Indonesia. Born into a Malay aristocratic family in the Sultanate of Langkat in North Sumatra, he was educated in both Sumatra and Java. While attending senior high school in Surakarta around 1930, Amir became involved with the nationalist movement and fell in love with a Javanese schoolmate, Ilik Sundari. Even after Amir continued his studies in legal school in Batavia (now Jakarta) the two remained close, only separating in 1937 when Amir was recalled to Sumatra to marry the sultan's daughter and take on responsibilities of the court. Though unhappy with his marriage, he fulfilled his courtly duties. After Indonesia proclaimed its independence in 1945, he served as the government's representative in Langkat. The following year he was killed in a social revolution led by the PESINDO (Pemuda Sosialis Indonesia), and buried in a mass grave.
  
  Amir began writing poetry while still a teenager: though his works are undated, the earliest are thought to have been written when he first travelled to Java. Drawing influences from his own Malay culture and Islam, as well as from Christianity and Eastern literature, Amir wrote 50 poems, 18 pieces of lyrical prose, and numerous other works, including several translations. In 1932 he co-founded the literary magazine Poedjangga Baroe. After his return to Sumatra, he stopped writing. Most of his poems were published in two collections, Nyanyi Sunyi (1937) and Buah Rindu (1941), first in Poedjangga Baroe then as stand-alone books. (Full article...)
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  Portrait of Rădulescu, by Mișu Popp

  
  Ion Heliade Rădulescu or Ion Heliade (also known as Eliade or Eliade Rădulescu; Romanian pronunciation: [ˈi.on heliˈade rəduˈlesku]; 6 January 1802 – 27 April 1872) was a Wallachian, later Romanian academic, Romantic and Classicist poet, essayist, memoirist, short story writer, newspaper editor and politician. A prolific translator of foreign literature into Romanian, he was also the author of books on linguistics and history. For much of his life, Heliade Rădulescu was a teacher at Saint Sava College in Bucharest, which he helped reopen. He was a founding member and first president of the Romanian Academy.
  
  Heliade Rădulescu is considered one of the foremost champions of Romanian culture from the first half of the 19th century, having first risen to prominence through his association with Gheorghe Lazăr and his support of Lazăr's drive for discontinuing education in Greek. Over the following decades, he had a major role in shaping the modern Romanian language, but caused controversy when he advocated the massive introduction of Italian neologisms into the Romanian lexis. A Romantic nationalist landowner siding with moderate liberals, Heliade was among the leaders of the 1848 Wallachian revolution, after which he was forced to spend several years in exile. Adopting an original form of conservatism, which emphasized the role of the aristocratic boyars in Romanian history, he was rewarded for supporting the Ottoman Empire and clashed with the radical wing of the 1848 revolutionaries. (Full article...)
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  Carson in 1943

  
  Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist whose sea trilogy (1941–1955) and book Silent Spring (1962) are credited with advancing marine conservation and the global environmental movement.
  
  Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer and financial security. Its success prompted the republication of her first book, Under the Sea Wind (1941), in 1952, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955 — both were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths. (Full article...)
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  Depiction of Murasaki Shikibu by Tosa Mitsuoki

  
  Murasaki Shikibu (紫式部, 'Lady Murasaki'; c. 973 – c. 1014 or 1025) was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She was best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012. Murasaki Shikibu is a descriptive name; her personal name is unknown, but she may have been Fujiwara no Kaoruko (藤原香子), who was mentioned in a 1007 court diary as an imperial lady-in-waiting.
  
  Heian women were traditionally excluded from learning Chinese, the written language of government, but Murasaki, raised in her erudite father's household, showed a precocious aptitude for the Chinese classics and managed to acquire fluency. She married in her mid-to-late twenties and gave birth to a daughter, Daini no Sanmi. Her husband died after two years of marriage. It is uncertain when she began to write The Tale of Genji, but it was probably while she was married or shortly after she was widowed. In about 1005, she was invited to serve as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōshi at the Imperial court by Fujiwara no Michinaga, probably because of her reputation as a writer. She continued to write during her service, adding scenes from court life to her work. After five or six years, she left court and retired with Shōshi to the Lake Biwa region. Scholars differ on the year of her death; although most agree on 1014, others have suggested she was alive in 1025. (Full article...)
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  Angelou in 1993

  
  Maya Angelou (/ˈændʒəloʊ/ AN-jə-loh; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
  
  She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. (Full article...)
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  Vonnegut in 1965

  
  Kurt Vonnegut (/ˈvɒnəɡət/ VON-ə-gət; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death.
  
  Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut attended Cornell University, but withdrew in January 1943 and enlisted in the U.S. Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing of the city in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox. He and his wife both attended the University of Chicago while he worked as a night reporter for the City News Bureau. (Full article...)

Selected excerpt

“ As no one was now at home, Cinderella went to her mother's grave beneath the hazel-tree, and cried,
     "Shiver and quiver, little tree,
     Silver and gold throw down over me."
Then the bird threw a gold and silver dress down to her, and slippers embroidered with silk and silver. ” — Brothers Grimm, "Cinderella" in Grimm's Household Tales

More Did you know

• ... that Samuel Minturn Peck was the first Poet Laureate of Alabama, a title created for him, from 1930 until his death in 1938?
• ... that James McBride was described as "clearly stunned" when his novel The Good Lord Bird won the National Book Award for Fiction?
• ... that Arishima Ikuma, Japanese novelist, published his new-style poems and short stories as a vehicle to introduce the works of the French impressionist painter Paul Cézanne to the Japanese public?
• ... that German-born Jewish Egyptologist Käte Bosse-Griffiths published a novel in the Welsh language?
• ... that John Fowles' postmodern novel The French Lieutenant's Woman both emulated and parodied popular Victorian novels, like those of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy?

Selected illustration

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  Three Little Pigs

  Artist: Leonard Leslie Brooke; Restoration: Jujutacular

  The wolf blows down the straw house in a 1904 adaptation of Three Little Pigs, a fairy tale featuring anthropomorphic animals. Printed versions date back to the 1840s, but the story itself is thought to be much older. The story in its arguably best-known form appeared in English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs, first published in 1890. The phrases used in the story, and the various morals which can be drawn from it, have become embedded in western culture. The story uses the literary rule of three, expressed in this case as a "contrasting three", as the third pig's brick house turns out to be the only one which is adequate to withstand the wolf.
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  Divine Comedy

  Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  An engraving of Charon, in Greek mythology the ferryman of Hades who carried souls of the newly deceased across the River Styx that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. This illustration is from French engraver Gustave Doré's 1857 set of illustrations for Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, an Italian epic poem depicting an allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife. Here, Charon is shown coming to ferry souls across the river Acheron to Hell. The caption is from Henry Francis Cary's translation, from which this particular copy is taken:
  
  And, lo! toward us in a bark
  Comes on an old man, hoary white with eld,
  Crying "Woe to you, wicked spirits!"
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  The Song of Los

  Illustration: William Blake

  The Song of Los is an epic poem by William Blake first published in 1795 and considered part of his prophetic books. The poem consists of two sections, "Africa" and "Asia": in the first section Blake catalogues the decline of morality in Europe, which he blames on both the African slave trade and enlightenment philosophers, whereas in the second section he describes a worldwide revolution, urged by the eponymous Los.
  
  The illustration here is from the book's frontispiece and shows Urizen presiding over the decline of morality.
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  Wicked Witch of the West

  Illustrator: W. W. Denslow; Restoration: Lise Broer

  Dorothy (left) douses the Wicked Witch of the West with water, melting her, in this illustration from the first edition of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The appearance of the witch in the 1939 film adaptation of the novel has become an archetype for human wickedness. This film is the source of the oft-quoted phrase, "I'll get you, my pretty ... and your little dog too!" The unique Broadway musical, Wicked, The Untold Story Of the Witches of Oz, tells of The Wicked Witch of the West, the Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, The Scarecrow, and Glinda's shared history.
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  Rob Roy

  Engraving: Dalziel Brothers; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  A scene from Sir Walter Scott's 1817 historical novel Rob Roy, which tells the story of Frank Osbaldistone, the son of an English merchant who travels to Scotland to collect a debt stolen from his father. On the way he encounters the larger-than-life title character of Robert Roy MacGregor. Though Rob Roy is not the lead character (in fact the narrative does not move to Scotland until halfway through the book) his personality and actions are key to the story's development. The novel is a brutally realistic depiction of the social conditions in Highland and Lowland Scotland in the early 18th century.
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  Don Quixote

  Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  An engraving by Gustave Doré of a scene from Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age in the Spanish literary canon. The scene illustrated here occurs early in the novel, when Alonso Quixano (Quixote's real name) has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Don Quixote was published in two separate volumes, ten years apart. It is considered a founding work of modern Western literature, and it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.
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  Auld Lang Syne

  Engraving: John Masey Wright (artist) and John Rogers (engraver); restoration: Adam Cuerden

  A mid-19th century illustration for "Auld Lang Syne", a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to a traditional melody. It is traditionally used in the English-speaking world to bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve; this has led to the song being used to close other activities as well.
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  Puck of Pook's Hill

  Illustrator: Harold Robert Millar; restoration: Adam Cuerden

  An illustration from the story "On the Great Wall" from the first printing of Rudyard Kipling's 1906 fantasy book Puck of Pook's Hill, featuring the legend "'And that is the Wall!'".
  
  The book consists of a number of stories, all narrated to two children living near Burwash, in the area of Kipling's own house Bateman's, by people magically plucked out of history by the elf Puck, or told by Puck himself.
  
  
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  The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

  Illustration: George Cruikshank; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  In this scene from Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Uncle Toby's colonel invents a device for firing multiple miniature cannons at once, based on a hookah. Unfortunately, he and Toby find the puffing on the hookah pipe so enjoyable that they keep setting the cannons off. The novel was published in nine volumes over ten years, starting in 1759. Although it was not always held in high esteem by other writers, its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices and styles.
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  The Hunting of the Snark

  Illustration credit: Henry Holiday, after Lewis Carroll; restored by Adam Cuerden

  The Hunting of the Snark is a poem composed by the English writer Lewis Carroll between 1874 and 1876, typically characterised as a nonsense poem. The plot follows a crew of ten who cross the ocean to hunt the Snark, which may turn out to be a highly dangerous Boojum. This is the second of Henry Holiday's original illustrations for the first edition of the poem. It introduces some of the crew, whose names all start with "B"; the Bellman and Baker are on the upper deck, with the Barrister seated in the background; below are the Billiard-marker, the Banker and the Broker, with the maker of Bonnets and Hoods visible behind.
• 
  Humpty Dumpty

  Restoration: Jujutacular

  An illustration of Humpty Dumpty by American artist William Wallace Denslow, depicting the title character from the nursery rhyme of the same name. He is typically portrayed as an egg, although the rhyme never explicitly states that he is, possibly because it may have been originally posed as a riddle. The earliest known version is in a manuscript addition to a copy of Mother Goose's Melody published in 1803.
• 
  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

  Engraving: I. H. Jones; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  The frontispiece to a c. 1825 edition of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a lengthy narrative poem by Lord Byron. The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. This poem proved to be quite popular upon its publication in 1812. Byron himself said of this, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous."
• 
  The Sleeping Beauty

  Illustration: W. E. F. Britten; restoration: Adam Cuerden

  "The Sleeping Beauty" is a poem written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and published in 1830; it was later expanded and published in 1842 as "The Day-Dream". Based on the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, the poem (as with many of Tennyson's adaptations of existing literary works) focuses on a single aspect of the story, the appearance of the eponymous character as she sleeps.
  
  This illustration by W. E. F. Britten was published in 1901 to accompany a reprinting of "The Sleeping Beauty". It accompanies the poem's final lines: "She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells / A perfect form in perfect rest."
• 
  The Hunting of the Snark

  Illustration credit: Henry Holiday; restored by Adam Cuerden

  The Hunting of the Snark is a nonsense poem written by English writer Lewis Carroll between 1874 and 1876. The plot follows a crew of ten trying to hunt the Snark, which may turn out to be a highly dangerous Boojum. This original illustration by Henry Holiday accompanies the verse:
  

  
  '"`UNIQ--poem-0000001E-QINU`"'
  

• 
  The Princess and the Trolls

  Illustration: John Bauer

  The Princess and the Trolls, by John Bauer (1882–1918), was painted as an illustration for "The Changeling", a short story by Helena Nyblom. A watercolour held by the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, it was first published in the 1913 edition of the anthology Among Gnomes and Trolls. It shows the princess Bianca Maria between two trolls in a forest. Bauer's illustrations of fairy tales and children's stories made him a household name in his native Sweden, and shaped perceptions of many fairy tale characters.

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... that the Three Bards are the most celebrated poets in the history of Polish literature?
• ... that the literary movement of créolie tries to integrate the identity of Réunion with France?
• ... that Manuel Carpio's 1849 poem is the earliest literary depiction of the weeping ghost La Llorona?
• ... that Polish Renaissance poet Jan Kochanowski – considered "the founding father of Polish literature" – wrote threnodies, the first Polish-language tragedy, and epigrams?
• ... that the Lviv branch of the Ukrderzh­nats­menvydav was the main publisher of Polish literature in the Soviet Union by 1941?
• ... that the lands of the Shirvanshah served as the focal point for Persian literature during the 12th century?

Today in literature

14 November

• 1714 - William Shenstone, English poet born
• 1850 - Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer born
• 1862 - Ludwig Uhland, German poet died
• 1975 - Olga Berggolts, Russian poet died

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