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The Literature Portal
Introduction
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Literature is any collection of written work. The term is also used more narrowly for writings considered 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...)
The following are images from various literature-related articles on Wikipedia.
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Image 1A late 18th-century reprint of Orbis Pictus by Comenius, the first children's picture book. (from Children's literature) -
Image 2The 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) -
Image 3Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books) -
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Image 6Postal stamp of Russia celebrating children's books. (from Children's literature) -
Image 7A mother reads to her children in a mid- to late 19th century lithograph by Jessie Willcox Smith. (from Children's literature) -
Image 8Hugo Ball performing at the Cabaret Voltaire (from Performance poetry) -
Image 9Statue 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) -
Image 10The 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) -
Image 11Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books) -
Image 1212-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) -
Image 13Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books) -
Image 14A picture by Gustave Doré of Mother Goose reading written (literary) fairy tales (from Fairy tale) -
Image 15European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books) -
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Image 17A Chinese bamboo book, The Art of War, commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor in 18th-century China (from History of books) -
Image 18The 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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Image 21A 15th-century incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (from History of books) -
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Image 23Father Frost acts as a donor in the Russian fairy tale Father Frost, testing the heroine before bestowing riches upon her (from Fairy tale) -
Image 24Illustration from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 coming-of-age pirate adventure Treasure Island (from Children's literature) -
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Image 26The New England Primer (from Children's literature) -
Image 27The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, c. 1275 BCE, ink and pigments on papyrus, in the British Museum (London) (from History of books) -
Image 28John Bauer's illustration of trolls and a princess from a collection of Swedish fairy tales (from Fairy tale) -
Image 29John Newbery's A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, originally published in 1744 (from Children's literature) -
Image 30Sculpture of Alfonso Reyes writer of influential pieces of Mexican surrealism. (from Latin American literature) -
Image 31The Crescent Moon by Rabindranath Tagore illus. by Nandalal Bose, Macmillan 1913 (from Children's literature) -
Image 32The European fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in a painting by Carl Larsson in 1881 (from Fairy tale) -
Image 33Cutlery for children. Detail showing fairy-tale scenes: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel. (from Fairy tale) -
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Image 35Statue of C. S. Lewis in front of the wardrobe from his Narnia book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (from Children's literature) -
Image 36Roberto Bolaño is considered to have had the greatest United States impact of any post-Boom author (from Latin American literature) -
Image 37Poet Charles G. D. Roberts belonged to an informal group known as the Confederation Poets. (from Canadian literature) -
Image 381900 edition of the controversial The Story of Little Black Sambo (from Children's literature) -
Image 39The annual production of handwritten manuscripts and printed books per 1000 people in Western Europe (from History of books) -
Image 40Two people 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) -
Image 41Chinese Bookseller, illustration, c. 1824 (from History of books) -
Image 42Natias Neutert performing Diogenes Synopsis as at Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, 1986 (from Performance poetry) -
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Image 44J. K. Rowling reads from her novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (from Children's literature) -
Image 45The philosopher Confucius was influential in the developed approach to poetry and ancient music theory. (from History of poetry) -
Image 46Hemingway'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) -
Image 47The first page of Beowulf (from Medieval literature) -
Image 48A 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 -
Image 49Wole Soyinka, the first Black African writer awarded the prize (from Nobel Prize in Literature) -
Image 50Octavio Paz helped to define modern poetry and the Mexican personality. (from Latin American literature) -
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Image 52Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 CE. (from History of books) -
Image 53Jikji, 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) -
Image 54Short story writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. (from Canadian literature) -
Image 55Spanish philologist Ramón Menéndez Pidal was never awarded despite the numerous nominations. (from Nobel Prize in Literature) -
Image 56Pages from the 1819 edition of Kinder- und Haus-Märchen by the Brothers Grimm (from Children's literature) -
Image 57Walter Crane's chromolithograph illustration for The Frog Prince, 1874. (from Children's literature) -
Image 58A poet with a few enraptured fans (from Performance poetry) -
Image 59An early Mexican hornbook pictured in Tuer's History of the Horn-Book, 1896. (from Children's literature) -
Image 60Statuta 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) -
Image 61French author Albert Camus was the first African-born writer to receive the award. (from Nobel Prize in Literature) -
Image 62The character which means "poetry", in the ancient Chinese Great Seal script style. The modern character is 詩/诗 (shī). (from History of poetry) -
Image 63Cover of the Argentine children's magazine Billiken N° 1 (1919) (from Children's literature) -
Image 64European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books) -
Image 65Number of children's books titles published by the trade sector in 2020 (from Children's literature) -
Image 66Illustration from the Codex Manesse, a German book from the Middle Ages (from History of books) -
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Image 69The Violet Fairy Book (1906) -
Image 70The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from Tang dynasty China, i.e. 868 CE, the oldest known dated printed book in the world (British Library) (from History of books) -
Image 71Rudyard Kipling, the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (from Nobel Prize in Literature) -
Image 72An early Chinese poetics, the Kǒngzǐ Shīlùn (孔子詩論), discussing the Shijing (Classic of Poetry) (from History of poetry) -
Image 73A twentieth-century copyright imprint from McLoughlin Bros that features three rams and the copyright year, 1903 (from History of books) -
Image 74Gabriel García Márquez, one of the most renowned Latin American writers (from Latin American literature) -
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Image 78Author Margaret Atwood has suggested that during the 1970s Canadian literature was still looking for a national identity. (from Canadian literature) -
Image 79The Story of Mankind (1921) by Hendrik van Loon, 1st Newbery Award winner (from Children's literature) -
Image 80An author portrait of Jean Miélot writing his compilation of the Miracles of Our Lady, one of his many popular works. (from History of books) -
Image 81The Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Peter Englund at the announcement of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature (from Nobel Prize in Literature) -
Image 82Ivan Bilibin (1876–1942)'s illustration of the Russian fairy tale about Vasilisa the Beautiful (from Fairy tale) -
Image 83Goethe's Italian Journey between September 1786 and May 1788 (from Travel literature) -
Image 84Estimated medieval output of manuscripts in terms of copies (from Medieval literature)
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Image 85Peruvian poet César Vallejo, considered by Thomas Merton "the greatest universal poet since Dante" (from Latin American literature) -
Image 86In 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) -
Image 87Handwritten notes by Christopher Columbus on a Latin edition of The Travels of Marco Polo (from Travel literature) -
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Image 89European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (from History of books)
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Selected work
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
Angelou uses her autobiography to explore subjects such as identity, rape, racism, and literacy. She also writes in new ways about women's lives in a male-dominated society. Maya, the younger version of Angelou and the book's central character, has been called "a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America". Angelou's description of being raped as an eight-year-old child overwhelms the book, although it is presented briefly in the text. Rape is used as a metaphor for the suffering of her race. Another metaphor, that of a bird struggling to escape its cage, is a central image throughout the work.
Featured articles are displayed here.
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Image 1
Cabinet card of W. S. Gilbert in about 1880 by Elliott & Fry
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most famous of these include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado. The popularity of these works was supported for over a century by year-round performances of them, in Britain and abroad, by the repertory company that Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte founded, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. These Savoy operas are still frequently performed in the English-speaking world and beyond.
Gilbert's creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious. After brief careers as a government clerk and a lawyer, Gilbert began to focus, in the 1860s, on writing light verse, including his Bab Ballads, short stories, theatre reviews and illustrations, often for Fun magazine. He also began to write burlesques and his first comic plays, developing a unique absurdist, inverted style that would later be known as his "topsy-turvy" style. He also developed a realistic method of stage direction and a reputation as a strict theatre director. In the 1870s, Gilbert wrote 40 plays and libretti, including his German Reed Entertainments, several blank-verse "fairy comedies", some serious plays, and his first five collaborations with Sullivan: Thespis, Trial by Jury, The Sorcerer, H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance. In the 1880s, Gilbert focused on the Savoy operas, including Patience, Iolanthe, The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard and The Gondoliers. (Full article...) -
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Vargas Llosa in 1986
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025) was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist, and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics[who?] consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. In 2010, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat".
Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across various literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967 Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986 Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticized nationalism in different parts of the world. (Full article...) -
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Barney in 1898
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors through her salon and also with her poetry, plays, and epigrams, often thematically tied to her lesbianism and feminism.
Barney was born into a wealthy family. She was partly educated in France, and expressed a desire from a young age to live openly as a lesbian. She moved to France with her first romantic partner, Eva Palmer. Inspired by the work of Sappho, Barney began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900. Writing in both French and English, she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and courtesan Liane de Pougy and longer relationships with writer Élisabeth de Gramont and painter Romaine Brooks. (Full article...) -
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Walpole c. 1920–1925
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE (13 March 1884 – 1 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors Henry James and Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting and vivid plots, as well as his high profile as a lecturer, brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s but has been largely neglected since his death.
After his debut novel, The Wooden Horse, was published in 1909, Walpole wrote prolifically, producing at least one book every year. He was a spontaneous story-teller, writing quickly to get all his ideas on paper, seldom revising. His first novel to achieve major success was his third, Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, a tragicomic story of a fatal clash between two schoolmasters. During the First World War he served in the Red Cross on the Russian-Austrian front, and worked in British propaganda in Petrograd and London. In the 1920s and 1930s Walpole was much in demand not only as a novelist but also as a lecturer on literature, making four exceptionally well-paid tours of North America. (Full article...) -
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c. 1797 portrait
Mary Wollstonecraft (, also UK: ; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an English writer and philosopher best known for her advocacy of women's rights. Until the late twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional (at the time) personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.
During her brief career she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men but appeared to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. (Full article...) -
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Angelou in 1993
Maya Angelou ( ⓘ AN-jə-loh; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, essayist, 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. In 1982, Angelou 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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Rowling at the White House in 2010
Joanne Rowling ( ⓘ ROH-ling; born 31 July 1965), better known by her pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British author, philanthropist, producer, and screenwriter. She is best known for writing Harry Potter, a seven-volume series about a young wizard which is the best-selling book series in history, with over 600 million copies sold. She writes Cormoran Strike, an ongoing crime fiction series, under the alias Robert Galbraith.
Rowling conceived the idea for the Harry Potter series in 1990. The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, the birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997. Six sequels followed, concluding with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). In 2008, Forbes named her the world's highest-paid author. The books have been translated into 84 languages and have spawned a global media franchise including films and video games. The series revived fantasy as a genre in the children's market, spawned a host of imitators, and inspired an active fandom. Critical reception has been more mixed. Many reviewers see Rowling's writing as conventional; some regard her portrayal of gender and social division as regressive. There were also religious debates over the Harry Potter series. (Full article...) -
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Pound photographed in 1913 by Alvin Langdon Coburn
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and The Cantos (c. 1915–1962).
Pound's contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as H.D., Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the 1915 publication of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses. Hemingway wrote in 1932 that, for poets born in the late 19th or early 20th century, not to be influenced by Pound would be "like passing through a great blizzard and not feeling its cold". (Full article...) -
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William Shakespeare (c. 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" or simply "the Bard". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613) he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others. (Full article...) -
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Francis bin Fathallah bin Nasrallah Marrash (Arabic: فرنسيس بن فتح الله بن نصر الله مرّاش, ALA-LC: Fransīs bin Fatḥ Allāh bin Naṣr Allāh Marrāsh; 1835 or 29 June 1836 – 1874), also known as Francis al-Marrash or Francis Marrash al-Halabi, was a Syrian scholar, publicist, writer and poet of the Nahda or the Arab Renaissance, and a physician. Most of his works revolve around science, history and religion, analysed under an epistemological light. He traveled throughout West Asia and France in his youth, and after some medical training and a year of practice in his native Aleppo, during which he wrote several works, he enrolled in a medical school in Paris; yet, declining health and growing blindness forced him to return to Aleppo, where he produced more literary works until his early death.
Historian Matti Moosa considered Marrash to have been the first truly cosmopolitan Arab intellectual and writer of modern times. Marrash adhered to the principles of the French Revolution and defended them in his own works, implicitly criticizing Ottoman rule in West Asia and North Africa. He was also influential in introducing French romanticism in the Arab world, especially through his use of poetic prose and prose poetry, of which his writings were the first examples in modern Arabic literature, according to Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Shmuel Moreh. His modes of thinking and feeling, and ways of expressing them, have had a lasting influence on contemporary Arab thought and on the Mahjari poets. (Full article...)
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Selected excerpt
| “ | The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee ; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy. |
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| — Emily Dickinson, "The pedigree of Honey" | ||
More Did you know
- ... that Irish poet John Keegan Casey was released from prison on the condition he leave for Australia, but instead he stayed in Dublin in disguise?
- ... that the 1916 children's novel Just David was the second in a series of four consecutive bestsellers in the United States for Eleanor H. Porter?
- ... that a decasyllabic quatrain is a poetic form in which each stanza consists of four lines of ten syllables, usually with a rhyme scheme of AABB or ABAB?
- ... that in late 2008, Norwegian novelist Johan Harstad won the Brage Prize and was hired as the first in-house playwright at the National Theatre of Norway?
- ... that the Franciscan friar Manuel Antonio de Rivas, who was tried for heresy in 1775 in Mexico, wrote the first science-fiction text in the Americas?
Selected illustration
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Image 1Restoration: JujutacularAn 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. -
Image 2Illustration credit: Henry Holiday, after Lewis Carroll; restored by Adam CuerdenThe 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. -
Image 3Illustration: Jessie Willcox Smith; Restoration: ErikTheBikeManAn illustration from a ca. 1916 edition of The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, a children's novel written by Charles Kingsley and originally serialised in 1862–63. The book, a didactic moral fable, tells the story of Tom (lower left), a young boy who drowns and is reincarnated as a "water-baby". He undergoes a series of adventures and eventually regains his human form. It was extremely popular during its day and through the 1920s, but has since fallen out of favour, perhaps due to Kingsley's expression of many of the common prejudices of that time period, such as against Americans, Jews, blacks, and Catholics, particularly the Irish. -
Image 4Illustration credit: Henry Holiday; restored by Adam CuerdenThe 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-0000002D-QINU`"' -
Image 5Illustration: John BauerThe 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. -
Image 6Illustration: Unknown; restoration: Adam CuerdenJeeves is a fictional character in a series of comedic short stories and novels by English author P. G. Wodehouse, in which he is depicted as the highly competent valet of a wealthy and idle young Londoner named Bertie Wooster. First appearing in the short story "Extricating Young Gussie" in 1915, Jeeves continued to feature in Wodehouse's work until his last completed novel, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974). He also appeared in numerous films and television series, portrayed by such actors as Arthur Treacher, Michael Aldridge, and Dennis Price. The name and character of Jeeves have come to be identified with the quintessential valet or butler. -
Image 7Restoration: Lise BroerWilliam Wallace Denslow's illustration of the poem "The Queen of Hearts" from a 1901 issue of Mother Goose. The poem was originally published in 1782 as part of a set of four playing card based poems, but proved to be far more popular than the others. By 1785 it had been set to music, and it forms the basis of the plot of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Chapter XI: "Who Stole the Tarts?" Although it was originally published in a magazine for adults, it is now best known as a nursery rhyme. -
Image 8Illustration: William BlakeThe 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. -
Image 9The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania is an oil painting on canvas by the Scottish artist Joseph Noel Paton. Painted in 1849, it depicts the scene from William Shakespeare's comedy play A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which the fairy queen Titania and fairy king Oberon quarrel. When exhibited in Edinburgh in 1850, it was declared the "painting of the season". The painting was acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland in 1897, having initially been bought by the Royal Association for Promoting the Fine Arts. -
Image 10Restoration: Adam CuerdenH. Rider Haggard's iconic character Allan Quatermain, from Thure de Thulstrup's illustrations to the 1888 novel Maiwa's Revenge, a prequel to Haggard's most famous work, King Solomon's Mines. In this scene, Quatermain orders his troops to discharge their rifles, yelling, "Fire, you scoundrels!" The character served as the basis for the modern Indiana Jones. -
Image 11Illustration: William Edward Frank Britten; restoration: Adam CuerdenŒnone is a poem written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in 1829. Inspired by the Greek mythological figure Oenone, first wife of Paris of Troy, the poem is a dramatic monologue following the lead-up to the Trojan War and the war itself. This illustration, by William Edward Frank Britten, is accompanied by the lines "O mother Ida, many-fountain'd Ida, / Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die". -
Image 12Artist: Unknown; Restoration: Adam CuerdenA scene from Oscar Wilde's 1895 play An Ideal Husband, originally published in a 1901 collected edition of Wilde's works. The comedy, which opened January 3, 1896, at the Haymarket Theatre in London, revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. It has been adapted into television, radio/audio, and three films. The published version differs slightly from the performed play, for Wilde added many passages and cut others. Prominent additions included written stage directions and character descriptions. Wilde was a leader in the effort to make plays accessible to the reading public. -
Image 13Caterpillar, Alice's Adventures in WonderlandArtist: Sir John TennielSir John Tenniel's illustration of the Caterpillar for Lewis Carroll's classic children's book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The illustration is noted for its ambiguous central figure, which can be viewed as having either a human male's face with pointed nose and protruding lower lip or as the head end of an actual caterpillar, with the right three "true" legs visible. The small symbol in the lower left is composed of Tenniel's initials, which was how he signed most of his work for the book. The partially obscured word in the lower left-center is the last name of Edward Dalziel, the engraver of the piece. -
Image 14Illustrator: Harold Robert Millar; restoration: Adam CuerdenAn illustration from the story "The Knights of the Joyous Venture" from the first printing of Rudyard Kipling's 1906 fantasy book Puck of Pook's Hill, featuring the legend "Thorkild had given back before his Devil, till the bowmen on the ship could shoot it all full of arrows".
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. -
Image 15Artist: Unknown; Restoration: Lise BroerA scene from a late-16th century publication of Nezami Ganjavi's adaptation of the classical Persian story Layla and Majnun, which is based on the real story of Qays ibn al-Mulawwah, a young man from the northern Arabian Peninsula and his love Layla. There are two versions of the story, but in both, Majnun goes mad when her father prevents him from marrying her. In the depicted scene, the eponymous star-crossed lovers meet for the last time before their deaths. Both have fainted and Majnun's elderly messenger attempts to revive Layla while wild animals protect the pair from unwelcome intruders.
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- ... that the futurist novel Man of Smoke, according to a scholar, contains a hidden legal code for readers to piece together?
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- ... that a PhD student discovered a lost manuscript of Galen's Peri Alypias in 2005, in "one of the most spectacular finds ever of ancient literature"?
- ... that eight poems to the 6th-century Brittonic king Urien Rheged may be among the oldest works of vernacular literature in post-classical Europe?
- ... that the pastor John Littlejohn went from selling pornographic literature to sailors as a youth to protecting the Declaration of Independence?
Today in literature
- 1855 - Ludwig Ganghofer, German writer born
- 1884 - Lion Feuchtwanger, German novelist born
- 1893 - Miroslav Krleža, Croatian writer born
- 1956 - Gottfried Benn, German poet died
- 1971 - Claude Gauvreau, Canadian writer died
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