Laura Ingalls Wilder considered ‘These Happy Golden Years’ the end of her ‘Little House’ series. The book was published in 1943,
14 years before her death in 1957.
She submitted no more manuscripts to Harper & Brothers, nor to her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, who died in 1968,
25 years after “These Happy Golden Years’ was published.
The book is essentially a coming-of-age and a courtship novel.
Laura becomes a … Read the rest
Category: Literary Authors
As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying
As I Lay Dying, one of the finest examples of William Faulkner’s distinctive writing style, was first published in 1930. The novel is the first to introduce Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County, which serves as the setting for many of his novels and short stories. As in his other works, As I Lay Dying showcases Faulkner’s ability to reveal the intricacy of the human psyche. Told from … Read the rest
ARISTOPHANES Lysistrata
ARISTOPHANES Lysistrata
The masterpieces of comedy produced by Aristophanes, the sharp and lewd wit of fifth-century Athens, may forever play supporting roles to their tragic counterparts. However, Lysistrata, a fantasy in which Greek women stage a sit-in/sex strike to end the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, maintains a special place in dramatic and literary history. Featuring a title character whose name loosely translates as “she who disbands armies,” its … Read the rest
Abandonment in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Abandonment in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou’s autobiographical novel opens with three-year-old Maya and her four-year-old bother Bailey traveling alone across the United States wearing wrist tags that read “To Whom It May Concern.” The siblings are being sent away from their newly divorced parents to live with their paternal grandmother, and Maya reacts by pretending her parents are dead. “I couldn’t believe that our mother … Read the rest
ANDERSON, SHERWOOD Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
ANDERSON, SHERWOOD Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
Winesburg, Ohio, is a cycle comprising 21 short stories plus one prefatory story, “The Book of the Grotesque.” That initial story introduces the concept that runs through the rest of the stories: People dominated by one idea become grotesque, even if that one idea is true. The stories, each focusing on a particular resident, comprise a mini-population or representation of the town itself. Because Winesburg, … Read the rest
The House of the Spirits
The House of the Spirits (1982)
Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, published in 1982, tells the history of several generations of the Trueba family against the backdrop of Chile’s socialist government and the 1973 military coup that gave rise to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Clara, who regularly converses with the spirit world, marries Esteban Trueba, a wealthy landowner who regularly rapes peasant women working on his hacienda. … Read the rest
The American Dream in Little Women
The American Dream in Little Women
The American dream has long symbolized a change of fortune and the hope that through hard work or luck, even the poorest person can prosper. Immigrants flooding into America in the 19th century came looking for new opportunities that would lift them out of the poverty they had experienced in their home countries; for them, the American dream was inseparably linked with material wealth. … Read the rest
Things Fall Apart (1958)
Things Fall Apart (1958)
In 1958, Chinua Achebe published Things Fall Apart, which depicts the tragic downfall of a strong African clansman faced with the budding presence of colonialism. Okonkwo, Achebe’s central character, represents a man tied to his clan’s culture; moreover, Okonkwo represents the essence of male vigor within the tribe as he strives to lead the clan with strength and stoicism, persistently avoiding the appearance of weakness. Yet … Read the rest
Achebe Chinua
ACHEBE, CHINUA Anthills of the Savannah (1987)
The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s first novel, Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, is considered by many to be the prototype for modern African literature. In June 2007, his monumental standing in the world of African letters was recognized when he was awarded the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction. Many of the themes introduced in that novel, such as colonialism, language, the … Read the rest