English Literature

Henry James’s novel  The Portrait of a Lady  opens at Gardencourt, the country home of Mr. Touchett. Mr. Touchett and his son, Ralph, are having tea with his friend Lord Warburton when Mrs. Touchett returns home from America. She has their niece Isabel Archer with her. Isabel is a young woman recently orphaned. She has two older sisters, who are each married. Mrs. Touchett hopes that Isabel will learn sophistication and find a husband. Before Isabel’s arrival, Lord Warburton assures Mr. Touchett and Ralph that he is disinclined to marry—unless he meets a particularly interesting woman. Warburton meets Isabel, finds her interesting, and falls in love. He invites her to visit him at home, where she meets his two sisters. She likes all three of them—finding Warburton kind and sensitive in addition to being wealthy and well placed, socially. Later, she hears from her friend, Henrietta Stackpole. Henrietta is an American journalist working in Europe. Isabel invites her to visit

Ralph Ellison  (1914 – 1994)  Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer.  He was born in Oklahoma.  Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man which won the National Book Award in 1953.  He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964) a collection of political, social and critical essays and Going to the Territory (1986).  A posthumous novel Juneteeth was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left after his death.  He specifically cited reading T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” as a major awakening moment.  His first published story was Hymie’s Bull inspired by his 1933, hoboing on a train with his uncle to get to Tuskegee.  In 1969, he received the “Presidential Medal of Freedom”. Important Works of Ralph Ellison  Invisible Man (1952)  This novel is narrated in the first person by protagonist an unnamed Black Man who considered himself socially invisible.  According to the ‘New York Times’, U.S. president Barrack Obama mod

William Faulkner  (1897 – 1962)  William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer and a Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi.  He is primarily known for his novels, short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha Country based on Lafayetle Country Mississippi where he spent most of his life. He got the Nobel Prize in literature in 1949.  Two of his works A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He wrote his first novel Soldier’s Pay and second Mosquitoes.  Faulkner wrote his first novel set in his fictional Yoknapatawpha Country entitled Flags in the Dust drew heavily on the traditions and history of the south and finally published in 1928 as Sartois.  In 1962, he died of a massive heart attack. His most celebrated novels such as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932) and Absalom! Absalom! (1936). His first story collection These 13 (1931) includes many of his most acclaim

Scott Fitzgerald  (1896-1940)    Francis Scott Fitzgerald was an American novelist and short story writer whose works are paradigmatic writing of the Jazz age (a period in 1920's ending with great depression).  He is considered a member of Lost Generation of 1920's. He finished four novels : This Side of Paradise (1920) The Beautiful and Damned (1922) The Great Gatsby (1925) Tender is the Night (1935)  A Fifth, unfinished novel The Love of the Last Tycoon published posthumously. His bibliography have previously listed the story, sometimes referred to as -"Fitzgerald bibliographies have previously listed the story, sometimes referred to as "The Women in the House", as "unpublished", or as "Lost – mentioned in correspondence, but no surviving transcript or manuscript"."   In ' This side of Paradise ' the hero reflects "I know myself but that is all". About 'Ernest Hemingway' Fitzgerald said - " Th

Henry David Thoreau  (1817 - 1862)  Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister,development critic, surveyor and historian and a leading Transcendentalist.  Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings and his essay Resistance to Civil Government. (Also known as Civil Disobedience).  Thoreau's philosophy of Civil Disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.  Thoreau had taken up a version of P. B. Shelley's principle in the political poem The Mask of Anarchy(1819).  In 1854, he would publish as Walden or Life in the Woods recounting the 2 years, 2 months and 2 days that he had spent at Walden Pond.  He was influenced by Indian Spiritual thought.  Robert Frost wrote of Thoreau, “In one book...he surpasses everything we have had in America”. Mahatma Gandhi

Nathaniel Hawthorne  (1804 – 1864)   Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.  Hawthorne published his first work, a novel titled Fanshowe (1828): he later tried to suppress it, feeling it was not equal to the standard of his later work.  He published several short stories in various periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice Told Tales, and later in 1842. His fiction works are considered part of Romantic Movement and more specifically Dark Romanticism.  In 1836, Hawthorne served as editor of the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge.  Hawthorne wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse.  Hawthorne became friends with Herman Melville in 1850, who read his short story collection. Mosses from an Old Manse, and his unsigned review of the collection titled Hawthorne and his Mosses, were printed in “The Literary World”.  Melville, who composing Moby-Dick at the time, wrote that these stories revealed a dark s

 Arthur Miller  (1915-2005)  Arthur Asher Miller was a prolific American playwright, essayist and prominent figure in 20th century American Theatre.  Among his most popular Works/Plays are:   All My Sons (1947) Death of a Salesman (1947)  The Crucible (1953)  A View from the Bridge (1955) He also wrote several screenplays and most noted among them is his work on The Misfits (1956). Thedrama ‘Death of a Salesman’ is among the finest American plays of 20th century.  In 1947, Miller's play ' All My Sons ' established his reputation as a playwright. Critics regarded it as a very depressing play in a time of great optimism.  His Death of a Salesman (1949) won all the three major awards of America i.e. Pulitzer Prize  Tony Award for best author and  The New York Drama Critic Circles Award   In 1956, One act version of Miller's verse drama “A View from the Bridge " opened on a broad way in a joint bill with a well-known play A Memory of Two Mondays.  In 1964,

Ralph Waldo Emerson  (1803 - 1882)      Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer and poet who led the Transcendentalism  Movement of Mid-19 century.   He expressed the philosophy of Transcendentalism in his 1836 essay 'Nature'. Following this ground breaking work he gave a speech entitled “The American Scholar” in 1837, which Oliver Holmes Sr. considered to America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence”.  His well-known essays are :  Self-Reliance The Over Soul  Circles   The Poet and  Experience  Emerson is one of the several figures who took a more pantheist or Pandeist approach by rejecting views of god as separate from World. When asked to sum up his work, he said his central doctrine was “ Infinitude of the Private Man ” He is also known as a mentor and friend of fellow transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.  Emerson anonymously published his first essay Nature on 9 Sep 1838.   The transcendental group began to publish its flagship journal