User:JustusGS
British Lit[edit]
Alfred (the Great), king of Wessex.
The Anglo-Saxon period ended with the invasion of the Normans' in 1066.
Beowolf is the most well known poem, the form of poetry of Beowulf is called an Epic.
The Crusades was a series of Holy Wars launched by the Christian states of Europe against the Sarcens, also known as Moslems.
1215: Magna Carta is signed.
Stories like King Arthur and the Arthurian legend were told by these bards.
Geoffrey Chaucer passed away in 1400.
Chaucer is most famous today for the Canterbury Tales.
Queen Elizabeth I was the queen of England during the Elizabethan Age.
Christopher Marlowe wrote Dr. Faustus and Tamerlane the Great.
Sir Walter Raleigh became a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, who knighted him.
Most of Shakespeare’s histories deal with the wars with France and the War of the Roses.
Shakespeare's tragedies/histories include Henry IV and Henry VI
Sonnets consist of 14 lines in iambic pentameter.
The Puritan movement was led by Oliver Cromwell.
John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress.
John Milton's masterpiece was Paradise Lost.
The Restoration refers to when King Charles II became king and restored England to a Monarchy.
The first literary magazine, “The Tatler,” was published in 1709.
Samuel Johnson’s most famous work, A Dictionary of the English Language, was published in 1755.
French Revolution began in 1789 as a protest against royal despotism.
Lord Byron wrote the poem “Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.”
Robert Browning married the poet Elizabeth Barrett.
Thomas Hardy's s most famous novels include the Return of Native, Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Jude the Obscure.
Oscar Wilde believed in “art for art’s sake”, and supported the idea that art was supposed to be “beautiful.”
Alfred Tennyson wrote Idylls of the King.
The Fin de Siècle occurred in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Victorian principles were being rejected.
Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises.
Gertrude Stein was a writer and poet, sometimes considered the "mother of the 'Lost Generation."
T.S. Elliot's most famous work is The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
1936: Spanish Civil Wars starts
1973-U.S Troops-pull out of Vietnam
Zora Neale Hurston was born in Florida.
Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett is a contemporary British Sci-Fi author.
Douglas Noel Adams wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The Battle of Plassey in 1757 left the East India Company as the chief political and military power in India.
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay.
Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre.
Mary Anne Evans was commonly known by her male pseudonym, George Elliot.
Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2007, and wrote The Golden Notebook in 1962.
J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter.
A.A. Milne wrote Winnie the Pooh.
The failure of Britain and France in the Suez crisis ended colonialism.
V. S. Naipaul was born on 17 August, 1932 in Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago. He is a British knight, and n 2001 he won the Nobel prize in literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
American Lit[edit]
Anne Bradstreet-First poet and first female writer in colonial America
Jonathan Edwards-Wrote “The End For Which God Created the World”, which would inspire thousands of missionaries throughout the 19th century
On July 4, 1776 the Continental Congress, the de facto national government for what would become the United States, adopted the
American Declaration of Independence
Thomas Paine -creating the highly influential and widely read pamphlet, Common Sense (1776)
Ralph Waldo Emerson-Emerson pioneered of Transcendentalism as an essayist, poet and lecturer who developed theories primarily on the importance of self-reliance, mysticism and individualism generally.
Henry David Thoreau-Thoreau was an ugly author,
Margaret Fuller -She was a literary critic and journalist who was an important Female Rights advocate
The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 skyrocketed belief in human capability
Washington Irving -“Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Irving sparked much of the speculative fiction of the period.
Longfellow (1807-1882)—Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine.
Walt Whitman was best known for his use of free-metric poetry:Leaves of Grass
Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) Using the pen name, Mark Twain: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Jack London (1876-1916) London, a Californian came from a poor background and spent a lot of time educated himself. He quickly became wealthy after publishing several well written works that pertained a lot to how life was in the Klondike Gold Rush.
"A few things I have found to be true. If you leave out important things or events that you know about, the story is strengthened. If you leave or skip something because you do not know it, the story will be worthless. The test of any story is how very good the stuff that you, not your editors, omit." –Ernest Hemmingway.
Sinclair Lewis was born in Minnesota of 1885 and died in Rome of 1951 by a heart attack. Lewis was a satirist who received the first American Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930 because of his most noted novel Babbitt, which is a satire of the middle-class American life.
Elizabeth Bishop : Born in February 1911 and died in October 1979, Elizabeth Bishop was one of the most renowned contributors to the modernist movement. Greatly influenced by and an influence on Robert Lowell
E. E. Cummings He wrote poetry that discarded many of the traditional rules of rhythm as well as stanza formation and capitalization
Eugene O’Neill-Critical works include Strange Interlude (1928), which won him a pulitzer prize,
Arthur Miller- Important works include All My Sons(1947), Death of a Salesman1949), The Crucible (1953)
J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy created a new age for fantasy.
J.D. Salinger- The Catcher in the Rye
Cormac McCarthy-He won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 Post-apocalyptic work: The Road.
'Noam Chomsky' (born December 7, 1928) is an American historian, activist, cognitive scientist, philosopher, and linguist born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Malcolm Gladwell-The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures.
Nikki Giovanni-Born on June 7, 1943 in Knoxville Tennessee
Edward Estlin Cummings (E.E. Cummings) uses an unusual writing style, with random punctuation as well as spacing. He has unconventional capitalization in his poems, unusual line, words, and sometimes letter placements too. At times his poems can be quite confusing to analyze.
Tennessee Williams -The Rose Tattoo (1951) Received the Tony Award
Thornton Wilder -Our Town (1938) Pulitzer Prize winner
Edward Albee-The Zoo Story (1958)
Phillis Wheatley (1753–84) Phillis was the first African American poet and the first African American women to be published.
Victor Séjour (1817–74)- There he wrote “Le Mulatre” his first work in 1847. This work is considered the first fiction work published by an African American
Langston Hughes-Hughes' Important Works: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1921 – Poetry) – First poem by Hughes ever published, published in The Crisis • "The Weary Blues" (1926 – Poetry)
Claude McKay' was born in Clarendon, Jamaica on September 15, 1889 and died in Chicago, IL
W.E.B Du Bois-903 published his seminal work “The Souls of Black Folk” collection of 14 essays.
Alice Walker-1982 The Color Purple, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.•
Toshio Mori- Known to be the earliest, if not first, Japanese American writers to publish a book of fiction.
Han Suyin-One of the few who wrote knowledgeably and authentically of Chinese fairy tales.Wrote: Four Faces
Lisa See An American writer and novelist born in Paris on February 18, 1955. Having a Chinese and American family helped influence her work and life. Her works include Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005),
Amy Tan -Her works include The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses.
1988-The USS Maine explodes in Havana Harbour
Cristina Garcia-Born in 1958, she has written two books about what it mean to be a Cuban American. “Dreaming in Cuban” (1992)
Emma Lazarus – Born in New York City on July 22, 1849, Lazarus’s parents were Sephardic Jews originally from Portugal. During the mass immigration to America in the late 1800’s, Lazarus advocated for the rights of her people with one of her most famous poems “Song of a Semite.” She was a key figure of this time period, and her sonnet “The New Colossus,” inscribed in the pedestal of the Stature of Liberty, asserts her determination in this juncture. She died of lymphoma on November 19, 1887.
Arthur Miller – Born in Harlem on October 17, 1915, Miller is considered one of the most influential dramatists of the 20th century.
Native Americans spoke more than 200 different languages.
Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa) 1858-1939 -Physician, autobiographer, storyteller, essayist, and lecturer. -Santee Sioux Indian-Santee Reservation Redwood Falls, Minnesota -Only doctor available during Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890.
'Emily Dickinson' was born in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1830
Maya Angelou -autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The rapist was then murdered by Angelou’s uncle, and her guilt caused her to become mute for five years.
Sylvia Plath -She attended Smith College and then moved to England with a Fulbright scholarship, where she met her husband, Ted Hughes. Hughes left Plath in 1962 for another woman, which inspired Plath’s book Ariel. Plath committed suicide in 1963 with her gas oven.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965)-The Lottery, which depicts a stoning in a small American town. Jackson said the Lottery was “a graphic dramatization of pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.”
Toni Morrison b.1931 Age 81
Born in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison attended Howard University, married twice and had two children.
George Carlin Died June 22, 2008 (aged 71)
David Sedaris: Important Works- Me Talk Pretty One Day, -Openly gay Celebrity writer
Al Franken-Minnesota Senator
Ray Bradbury-His most famous work, the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451
Frank Herbert -the Dune saga, in part using notes left behind by Frank Herbert. The original Dune saga includes Dune (1065), Dune Messiah (1969), Children of Dune (1976), God Emperor of Dune (1981), Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985).
1969: Stonewall Riots last for three days in Greenwich Village, New York City. Thousands of gays and lesbians violently and publicly protest against police brutality and inequality. Stonewall ushers in a new era of the Gay Rights Movement.
Adrienne Rich- In the 1970s, Rich divorced her husband and came out publically as a lesbian with the publication of her epic length “Twenty-One Love Poems.”
Edgar Rice Burroughs Born in Chicago, Illinois. Burroughs was a novelist known for writing in a variety of genres, including
Robert A. Heinlein He helped pull science fiction into the realm of reputable literature, and promoted it to a higher standard of writing.
Alan Moore (November 18, 1953): Is famously known for his series Watchmen.
Art Spiegelman (February 15, 1948): An american cartoonist, most popular for his comic series called, Maus (1991)
Suzanne Collins
o August 10,1962 - present
o From Connecticut (USA)
o Grew up with father in U.S. Air Force, moved around a lot
o TV writer
o Dystopian Works: The Hunger Games Trilogy
Don DeLillo November, 20, 1936 - present
o From New York (USA)
o Comes from big family
o Likes to write about Cold War and nuclear war
Dystopian Works: Underworld and Cosmopolis
Louisa May Alcott: She died in Boston, Massachusetts on March 6, 1888. Little Women (1868)
Dr. Seuss-One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (1960)
Judy Blume-Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970) Blubber (1974)
Mary McCarthy-Her work is precise and is known for mixing fiction with autobiography. Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (1957)
By the mid-19th century, western populations began to grow due to the decreased danger of hostile Native Americans, the promise of land due to the Homestead Act of 1862,
A.B. Guthrie, Jr.
o Born January 13, 1901, in Bedford, IN, died April 26, 1991
o Moved to Montana Territory at six months old, grew up there
o Majored in journalism at Harvard
o Famous works: The Big Sky; The Way West; These Thousand Hills; Fair Land, Fair Land; The Big It, and Other Stories (short stories)
• Louis L’Amour
Rick Riordan (June 5, 1964 [San Antonio, Texas] - ): Double majored in English and Social Studies, topped the Best Seller list in 2008. Wrote Percy Jackson and the Olympians
SE Hinton-She is known as one of the pioneers of the Young Adult Novel genre. Her most notable works are The Outsiders,
Meg Cabot-She writes a lot of book series' which are really popular in this genre.Her most notable works are The Princess Diaries series
Charles Perrault -La Barbe bleue (Bluebeard), andCendrillon (Cinderella).
Gail Carson Levine- include numerous popular interpretations of fairy tales, such as Ella Enchanted (based on "Cinderella")