March 3, 2009
Wuthering Heights
Written by Emily Brontë
“What does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day, I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features—mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!”
— Chapter 33, page 304
Fun Facts
- Emily Brontë is the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë, best known as the author Jane Eyre.
- She wrote under the penname Ellis Bell in order to hide the fact that she was female.
- Wuthering Heights was her only novel.
- On first publication the book was poorly received because Victorian readers found it to be scandalous.
March 9, 2009
The Red Badge of Courage
Written by Stephen Crane
“He suddenly lost concern for himself, and forgot to look at a menacing fate. He became not a man but a member. He felt that something of which he was a part—a regiment, an army, a cause, or a country—was in a crisis. He was welded into a common personality which was dominated by a single desire. For some moments he could not flee, no more than a little finger can commit a revolution from a hand.”
— Chapter 5, page 32
Fun Facts
- Crane wrote his first known story when he was just fourteen years old. It was called Uncle Jake and the Bell Handle.
- Crane was inspired to write The Red Badge of Courage by issues of Century which depicted famous battles and military leaders from the Civil War.
- The Red Badge of Courage was first published in serialized form and was an instant hit.
March 16, 2009
Jane Eyre
Written by Charlotte Brontë
"Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow—creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex."
—Chapter 12, page 115
Fun Facts
•Charlotte was the oldest of the three famed Brontë sisters and nurtured the growth of their careers.•Like her sisters, Charlotte wrote under a masculine name to hide the fact that she was a woman. The name she used was Currer Bell.
•Though she is best known for writing Jane Eyre, which is a highly revered work of English Literature, she also penned the novels Shirley and Villette.
March 26, 2009
A Tale of Two Cities
Written by Charles Dickens
"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this."
—Chapter 3, pages 11-12
Fun Facts
- A Tale of Two Cities is one of the two historical novels Dickens ever wrote; the other one is Barnaby Rudge.
- A Tale of Two Cities was originally published in All Year Round, a magazine that Dickens created.
- It has been estimated that one in ten people in England was a reader of Dickens during the Victorian era.
March 31, 2009
The Cantebury Tales
Written by Geoffrey Chaucer
"Thus swyved was this carpenteris wyf,
For al his kepyng and his jalousye;
And Absolon hath kist hir nether ye;
And Nicholas is scalded in the towte.
This tale is doon, and God save al the rowte!"
—The Miller’s Tale, page 180
Fun Facts
- The Canterbury Tales are a collection of short stories written in Middle English in the 14th century.
- Chaucer’s work represents one of the first pieces of literature to refer to paper, which was a recent invention at this time.
- The use of vernacular English—instead of Latin or French—reveals the influential contribution The Canterbury Tales had on English literature.
- Chaucer was a popular and well-respected poet in his day, and is often referred to now as the Father of English Literature.
- The Miller’s Tale represents the second of Chaucer’s The Cantebury Tales.
