Catalog Search Results
Literary Reference Center
Novels, short stories, poems, plot summaries and synopses, and literary criticism. Research guides, lesson plans, and citation tools support student learning.
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Four new and revelatory essays by the author of My Brilliant Friend and The Lost Daughter. In 2020, Claire Luchette in O, The Oprah Magazine described the beloved Italian novelist Elena Ferrante as "an oracle among authors." Here, in these four crisp essays, Ferrante offers a rare look at the origins of her literary powers. She writes about her influences, her struggles, and her formation as both a reader and a writer; she describes the perils of...
Author
Language
English
Description
"From New York Times bestselling author Heather Morris comes the memoir of a life of listening to others. In Listening Well, Heather will explore her extraordinary talents as a listener-a skill she employed when she first met Lale Sokolov, the tattooist at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the inspiration for her bestselling novel. It was this ability that led Lale to entrust Heather with his story, which she told in her novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz and...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
This Canadian classic, by one of the country's beloved authors, is a personal journey through time and space to the heart of family and the soul of the Canadian experience.
Drifting Home is an account of a journey by Pierre Berton and his family as they raft down the Yukon River from Lake Bennett, British Columbia, to Dawson in the Yukon Territory. It is a meditation on family and childhood and the small moments from which memories are drawn....
Drifting Home is an account of a journey by Pierre Berton and his family as they raft down the Yukon River from Lake Bennett, British Columbia, to Dawson in the Yukon Territory. It is a meditation on family and childhood and the small moments from which memories are drawn....
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Samuel Johnson is famously known for single-handedly creating the first recognized dictionary of the English language, just one of many his many renowned accomplishments. The biography of this remarkable writer, dramatist, poet, and moralist was penned by his friend, James Boswell, in 1791. An immediate success upon its publication, this work has come to be considered the greatest biography produced in the English language, and has earned Boswell...
Author
Language
English
Description
"An arresting memoir about what it means to come of age at the center of exultant bloodlines and harrowing bloodshed. Written in a distinctive voice and filled with personality, humor, and pathos, Fruit Punch is a memoir unlike any other, from a one-of-a-kind millennial talent. Growing up in Dallas, Texas, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Kendra Allen had a complicated, loving, and intense family life filled with desire and community but also undercurrents...
8) Footsteps
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Richard Holmes's great work of biographical exploration, published alongside its sister volume 'Sidetracks'.
In 1985, Richard Holmes published a small book of essays called 'Footsteps' and the writing of biography was changed forever. A daring mix of travel, biographical sleuthing and personal memoir, it broke all the conventions of the genre and remains one of the most intoxicating, magical works of modern literary exploration ever published.
Sleeping...
9) Tono-Bungay
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
The story of an apprentice chemist whose uncle's worthless medicine becomes a spectacular marketing success, Tono-Bungay earned H. G. Wells immediate acclaim when it appeared in 1909. It remains a sparkling chronicle of chicanery and human credulity, and is today regarded by many as Wells's greatest novel. As Andrea Barrett observes in her Introduction, "Through its detailed, often brilliant descriptions and powerful imagery, [Tono-Bungay] slyly satirizes...
10) John Barleycorn
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Wrestling with the disease of alcoholism for most of his life, Jack London tells all in his autobiography John Barleycorn. Beginning with a discussion of the prohibition movement and its effects, London explores the ways that alcohol affects daily life in the Victorian era. Because there were not many forms of affordable entertainment or reliable communication, bars were the perfect spot for social activity. People were able to sit and drink, enjoying...
Author
Language
English
Description
Biographia Literaria or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, is an autobiography in discourse by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The work was originally intended as a mere preface to a collected volume of his poems, explaining and justifying his own style and practice in poetry. The work grew to a literary autobiography, including, together with many facts concerning his education and studies and his early literary adventures, an extended...
Author
Language
English
Description
"The renowned biographer's definitive portrait of a literary titan. Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene. Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins delivers the long awaited tale of his wild life and times, both at home and around the globe.
"In Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins turns that unparalleled literary sensibility inward, stitching together stories of his unconventional life, from his Appalachian childhood to his globetrotting adventures -- told in his unique voice that combines the sweet and sly, the spiritual and earthy....
Author
Language
English
Description
Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen gave the world some of the most memorable stories ever written; masterpieces like "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," and "The Little Match Girl" have been stitched into the very fabric of Western popular culture. In this autobiographical volume, the author of some of the most beloved children's literature tells the remarkable and inspiring story of his own upbringing and rise to prominence.
Author
Language
English
Description
"Thinking of Ernest Hemingway often brings to mind his travels around the world, documenting war and engaging in thrilling adventures. However, fully understanding this outsized international author means returning to his place of birth. Hidden Hemingway presents highlights from the extraordinary collections in his hometown of Oak Park. Thoroughly researched, and illustrated with more than 300 color images, this impressive volume includes never-before-published...
Author
Language
English
Description
This new biography explores the forces that shaped the interior life of one of the most beloved novelists in the English language. Each chapter begins by evoking an object that conjures up a key moment or theme in Austen's life and work. The woman who emerges is far tougher, more socially and politically aware, and altogether more modern that the conventional picture. The book looks at the biographical influences on her work, as well as her boundless...
Author
Language
English
Description
This memoir by the oral historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Good War is “a masterpiece about a life which itself is a sort of masterpiece” (Oliver Sacks).
Chosen as a Best Book of the Year in 2007 by the Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, and Playboy, Studs Terkel’s memoir Touch and Go is “history from a highly personal...
Chosen as a Best Book of the Year in 2007 by the Chicago Tribune, Publishers Weekly, and Playboy, Studs Terkel’s memoir Touch and Go is “history from a highly personal...
18) My Dear Mother: Stormy Boastful, and Tender Letters By Distinguished Sons—From Dostoevsky to Elvis
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
This fascinating collection of letters between sons and mothers offers an intimate and unexpected glimpse into the mind and heart of the artist. Here are letters by over fifty writers, painters, and musicians, from boyhood to manhood--including Elvis Presley, Ezra Pound, E. B. White, Paul Cezanne, Henry James, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Richard Wagner, Victor Hugo, Jean Cocteau, Tennessee WIlliams, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Karen Elizabeth Gordon...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A Memoir of Jane Austen is a biography of the novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817) published in 1869 by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. A second edition was published in 1871 which included previously unpublished Jane Austen writings.[1] A family project, the biography was written by James Edward Austen-Leigh but owed much to the recollections of Jane Austen's many relatives. However, it was the decisions of her close friend and sister, Cassandra...