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Description The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come was written in 1678 by John Bunyan, a Puritan and a dissenter from the Church of England. It is an allegory of the journey to redemption of the faithful, through many snares and difficulties. Cast in the form of a dream, the first part of the work deals with a man called Christian, who sets off carrying a great burden. He meets many helpers and many adversaries on this journey. The second part of the work deals with

Description These brief biographies of more than eighty philosophers of ancient Greece were assembled by Diogenes Laërtius in the early third century. He based these on a variety of sources that have since been lost. Because of this, his biographies have become an invaluable source of information on the development of ancient Greek philosophy, and on ancient Greek culture in general. Most of what we know about the lives and otherwise lost doctrines of Zeno the Stoic and Diogenes the Cynic, for

Description Robert Frost published New Hampshire, his fourth book of poetry, in 1923. The centerpiece is the long poem “New Hampshire,” an ode to the state. Endnotes on its lines point to shorter poems in the “Notes” section, and the book is capped with “Grace Notes,” a series of short lyrics—some of which are among Frost’s most famous works. The poems are each a meditative brushstroke of Americana, presented in Frost’s trademark plain-spoken but carefully-considered verse. The collection went

Description Though mostly known for his plays, Shakespeare also published poetry during his writing career. From 1592 to 1593, an outbreak of the bubonic plague swept through England, killing almost 20,000 people. In January 1593 city officials ordered the theaters in London to shut their doors, and work for the famous playwright and actor came to a halt. Shakespeare turned to writing poetry to make ends meet during the closures. While the plague hindered his work in theaters, it provided

Description Michael Fane arrives in the thin red house in Carlington Road to his new family of Nurse, Cook, Annie the housemaid, his younger sister Stella, and the occasional presence of Mother. From here, the novel follows the next twenty years of his life as he tries to find his place in the upper echelons of Edwardian society, through prep school, studies at Oxford, and his emergence into the wide world. The setting is rich in period detail, and the characters portrayed are vivid and more

Description In 1839, Thoreau and his brother took a small boat upriver and back. Some years later, while in his cabin at Walden Pond, he gathered his notes from that journey and other writings from his journals, and composed this, his first book. Like the rivers it describes, the book meanders through varying territories and climates. He writes of the natural surroundings they encounter and of the history of the region, but also takes long and remarkable detours through topics like friendship,