Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Literature Portal

Introduction

Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. 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, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.

Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoir, letters, and the essay. Within its broad definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles or other printed information on a particular subject. (Full article...)

Outline
Index

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various literature-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Statue 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 2In 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 3Walter Crane's chromolithograph illustration for The Frog Prince, 1874. (from Children's literature)
Image 41865 illustration of Hop-o'-My-Thumb and the ogre by Alexander Zick (from Fairy tale)
Image 5Selma Lagerlöf, the first female writer to be awarded a Nobel Prize in literature, faced major controversies. Illustration from Svenska Dagbladet, 11 December 1909 (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
Image 6The Crescent Moon by Rabindranath Tagore illus. by Nandalal Bose, Macmillan 1913 (from Children's literature)
Image 7Roberto Bolaño is considered to have had the greatest United States impact of any post-Boom author (from Latin American literature)
Image 812-metre-high (40 ft) stack of books sculpture at the Berlin Walk of Ideas, commemorating the invention of modern book printing (from History of books)
Image 9Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books)
Image 10Page from the Blue Quran manuscript, ca. 9th or 10th century CE (from History of books)
Image 11European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books)
Image 12A Tagore illustration of a Hindu myth (from Children's literature)
Image 13Octavio Paz helped to define modern poetry and the Mexican personality. (from Latin American literature)
Image 14Statuta 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 15John Bauer's illustration of trolls and a princess from a collection of Swedish fairy tales (from Fairy tale)
Image 16A poet with a few enraptured fans (from Performance poetry)
Image 17Jikji, 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 18The Story of Mankind (1921) by Hendrik van Loon, 1st Newbery Award winner (from Children's literature)
Image 19The 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)
Image 20European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books)
Image 21A 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 22The New England Primer (from Children's literature)
Image 23A mother reads to her children, depicted by Jessie Willcox Smith in a cover illustration of a volume of fairy tales written in the mid to late 19th century. (from Children's literature)
Image 24Willy Wonka (from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and the Mad Hatter (from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) in London (from Children's literature)
Image 25Kings' Fairy Tale, 1909, by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (from Fairy tale)
Image 26Newbery's A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, originally published in 1744 (from Children's literature)
Image 27Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 CE. (from History of books)
Image 28Pages from the 1819 edition of Kinder- und Haus-Märchen by the Brothers Grimm (from Children's literature)
Image 29Beauty and the Beast, illustration by Warwick Goble (from Fairy tale)
Image 30Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books)
Image 31Estimated medieval output of manuscripts in terms of copies (from Medieval literature)
Image 32The Violet Fairy Book (1906)
Image 33French author Albert Camus was the first African-born writer to receive the award. (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
Image 34Gabrielle Roy was a notable French Canadian author. (from Canadian literature)
Image 35Illustration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865 (from Children's literature)
Image 36Galway Kinnell performing a poetic piece in Vermont (from Performance poetry)
Image 37Charles G. D. Roberts was a poet that belonged to an informal group known as the Confederation Poets. (from Canadian literature)
Image 38The character which means "poetry", in the ancient Chinese Great Seal script style. The modern character is 詩/诗 (shī). (from History of poetry)
Image 39The first page of Beowulf (from Medieval literature)
Image 40A picture by Gustave Doré of Mother Goose reading written (literary) fairy tales (from Fairy tale)
Image 41Goethe's Italian Journey between September 1786 and May 1788 (from Travel literature)
Image 42J. K. Rowling reads from her novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (from Children's literature)
Image 43Peruvian poet César Vallejo, considered by Thomas Merton "the greatest universal poet since Dante" (from Latin American literature)
Image 44Cutlery for children. Detail showing fairy-tale scenes: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel. (from Fairy tale)
Image 45The codex Manesse, a book from the Middle Ages (from History of books)
Image 46A Chinese bamboo book (from History of books)
Image 47Calliope, the muse of heroic poetry (from History of poetry)
Image 48An early Mexican hornbook pictured in Tuer's History of the Horn-Book, 1896. (from Children's literature)
Image 49Father Frost acts as a donor in the Russian fairy tale Father Frost, testing the heroine before bestowing riches upon her (from Fairy tale)
Image 50Gabriel García Márquez, the most famous of the Boom writers (from Latin American literature)
Image 51Postal stamp of Russia celebrating children's books. (from Children's literature)
Image 52Illustration from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 pirate adventure Treasure Island (from Children's literature)
Image 53H. O. Tanager performs at a bookstore in Boise, Idaho. (from Performance poetry)
Image 54A 15th-century Incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (from History of books)
Image 55The 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 56The former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke (2015) (from Canadian literature)
Image 57Alfonso Reyes writer of influential pieces of Mexican surrealism. (from Latin American literature)
Image 58Handwritten notes by Christopher Columbus on a Latin edition of The Travels of Marco Polo (from Travel literature)
Image 59European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (from History of books)
Image 60An 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 61A late 18th-century reprint of Orbis Pictus by Comenius, the first children's picture book. (from Children's literature)
Image 62Folio from a manuscript of the Shanamah (Book of Kings) (from History of books)
Image 63Statue 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 64Albert Edelfelt's illustration of Adalmina's Pearl, a Finnish fairy tale by Zachris Topelius. (from Fairy tale)
Image 65Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books)
Image 66From The Facetious Nights of Straparola by Giovanni Francesco Straparola (from Fairy tale)
Image 67Short story writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. (from Canadian literature)
Image 68Dresden Codex (page 49) (from History of books)
Image 69The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, c. 1275 BCE, ink and pigments on papyrus, in the British Museum (London) (from History of books)
Image 701900 edition of the controversial The Story of Little Black Sambo (from Children's literature)
Image 71Ivan Bilibin's illustration of the Russian fairy tale about Vasilisa the Beautiful (from Fairy tale)
Image 72Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, London (from Children's literature)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Selected work

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

"To Autumn" is a poem by English Romantic poet John Keats. The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats's poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes. "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes". Although personal problems left him little time to devote to poetry in 1819, he composed "To Autumn" after a walk near Winchester one autumnal evening. The work marks the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little over a year following the publication of "To Autumn", Keats died in Rome.

The poem has three eleven-line stanzas which describe a progression through the season, from the late maturation of the crops to the harvest and to the last days of autumn when winter is nearing. The imagery is richly achieved through the personification of Autumn, and the description of its bounty, its sights and sounds. The work has been interpreted as a meditation on death; as an allegory of artistic creation; as Keats's response to the Peterloo Massacre, which took place in the same year; and as an expression of nationalist sentiment. One of the most anthologised English lyric poems, "To Autumn" has been regarded by critics as one of the most perfect short poems in the English language.

Selected biographies - load new batch

Featured articles are displayed here.

Image 1
Title page of the first edition of Wright's Certaine Errors in Navigation (1599)

Edward Wright (baptised 8 October 1561; died November 1615) was an English mathematician and cartographer noted for his book Certaine Errors in Navigation (1599; 2nd ed., 1610), which for the first time explained the mathematical basis of the Mercator projection by building on the works of Pedro Nunes, and set out a reference table giving the linear scale multiplication factor as a function of latitude, calculated for each minute of arc up to a latitude of 75°. This was in fact a table of values of the integral of the secant function, and was the essential step needed to make practical both the making and the navigational use of Mercator charts.

Wright was born at Garveston in Norfolk and educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow from 1587 to 1596. In 1589 the college granted him leave after Elizabeth I requested that he carry out navigational studies with a raiding expedition organised by the Earl of Cumberland to the Azores to capture Spanish galleons. The expedition's route was the subject of the first map to be prepared according to Wright's projection, which was published in Certaine Errors in 1599. The same year, Wright created and published the first world map produced in England and the first to use the Mercator projection since Gerardus Mercator's original 1569 map. (Full article...)
Cabinet card of W.S. Gilbert in about 1880 by Elliott & Fry
Image 3
Vonnegut in February 1972

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works; further collections have been published after his death.

Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut attended Cornell University but withdrew in January 1943 and enlisted in the US Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing of the city in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He adopted his nephews after his sister died of cancer and her husband was killed in a train accident. He and his wife both attended the University of Chicago, while he worked as a night reporter for the City News Bureau. (Full article...)
Image 4
Mário de Andrade at age 35, 1928

Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. He wrote one of the first and most influential collections of modern Brazilian poetry, Paulicéia Desvairada (Hallucinated City), published in 1922. He has had considerable influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist—he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology—his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.

Andrade was a central figure in the avant-garde movement of São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism. His photography and essays on a wide variety of subjects, from history to literature and music, were widely published. He was the driving force behind the Week of Modern Art, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the visual arts in Brazil, and a member of the avant-garde "Group of Five." The ideas behind the Week were further explored in the preface to his poetry collection Pauliceia Desvairada, and in the poems themselves. (Full article...)
Image 5
Daguerreotype taken at Mount Holyoke, December 1846 or early 1847; the only authenticated portrait of Dickinson after early childhood

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.

Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's home in Amherst. (Full article...)
Image 6
The Chandos portrait (held by the National Portrait Gallery, London)

William Shakespeare (bapt. 26 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. He 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 of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. 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 whether the works attributed to him were written by others. (Full article...)
Late 16th-century (Azuchi–Momoyama period) depiction of Murasaki Shikibu, by Kanō Takanobu
Image 8
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (UK: /ˈwʊlstənkrɑːft/; née Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction and one of her best-known works. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary's mother died less than a fortnight after giving birth to her. She was raised by her father, who provided her with a rich if informal education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four, her father married a neighbour, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Mary came to have a troubled relationship. (Full article...)
Image 9
1849 "Annie" daguerreotype of Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (/poʊ/; né Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. He was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Poe was born in Boston, the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Poe. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and when his mother died the following year, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. They never formally adopted him, but he was with them well into young adulthood. He attended the University of Virginia but left after a year due to lack of money. He quarreled with John Allan over the funds for his education, and his gambling debts. In 1827, having enlisted in the United States Army under an assumed name, he published his first collection Tamerlane and Other Poems, credited only to "a Bostonian". Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement after the death of Allan's wife in 1829. Poe later failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declared a firm wish to be a poet and writer, and parted ways with Allan. (Full article...)

More selected biographies

Selected excerpt

“

Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

”

— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

More excerpts... Read at Wikisource...

More Did you know

... that author Elizabeth Jordan edited the first two novels of Nobel Prize winner Sinclair Lewis?
... that the first Indonesian novel by a woman, Kalau Tak Untung, deals with an "inexorable fate" which all humans must face?
... that Maya Angelou, who recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Clinton's 1993 inauguration, was the first poet to read an inaugural poem since Robert Frost at Kennedy's in 1961?
... that the author of Awful Splendour: A Fire History of Canada worked 15 years as a wildland firefighter on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon?
... that Gambler's Lament, one of the few non–religious poems in the ancient Hindu scripture Rig Veda, testifies to the popularity of gambling among Vedic Aryans?

More Did you know facts

Selected illustration

Image 1
The Bride of Lammermoor
Artist: Charles Robert Leslie; Engraver: J. Cooper
Restoration: Adam Cuerden
A scene from an 1886 edition of Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor, originally published in 1819. Although fictional, the story is based on an actual incident of the family of James Dalrymple: Dalrymple's daughter Janet was betrothed to one man in an arranged marriage, but in love with another. On her wedding night, Janet stabbed her husband. She was judged to be insane and died within a month. The book is part of Scott's Tales of My Landlord series and is the basis for Gaetano Donizetti's 1835 opera Lucia di Lammermoor.
More selected pictures
Image 2
Don Quixote
Restoration: Adam Cuerden
An engraving by Gustave Doré of a scene from Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age in the Spanish literary canon. The scene illustrated here occurs early in the novel, when Alonso Quixano (Quixote's real name) has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Don Quixote was published in two separate volumes, ten years apart. It is considered a founding work of modern Western literature, and it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.
More selected pictures
Image 3
The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby
Illustration: Jessie Willcox Smith; Restoration: ErikTheBikeMan
An 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.
More selected pictures
Image 4
Allan Quatermain
Restoration: Adam Cuerden
H. 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.
More selected pictures
Image 5
Wicked Witch of the West
Illustrator: W. W. Denslow; Restoration: Lise Broer
Dorothy (left) douses the Wicked Witch of the West with water, melting her, in this illustration from the first edition of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The appearance of the witch in the 1939 film adaptation of the novel has become an archetype for human wickedness. This film is the source of the oft-quoted phrase, "I'll get you, my pretty ... and your little dog too!" The unique Broadway musical, Wicked, The Untold Story Of the Witches of Oz, tells of The Wicked Witch of the West, the Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, The Scarecrow, and Glinda's shared history.
More selected pictures
Image 6
Scientific romance
Artist: Albert Robida
A typical 20th-century aerial rotating house, as drawn by Albert Robida. The drawing shows a dwelling structure in the scientific romance style elevated above rooftops and designed to revolve and adjust in various directions. An occupant in the lower right points to an airship with a fish-shaped balloon in the sky, while a woman rides a bucket elevator on the left. Meanwhile, children fly a kite from the balcony as a dog watches from its rooftop doghouse.
More selected pictures
Image 7
Humpty Dumpty
Restoration: Jujutacular
An 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.
More selected pictures
Image 8
The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania
Painting: Joseph Noel Paton
The 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.
More selected pictures
Image 9
The Last of the Mohicans
Illustration: Frank T. Merrill; restoration: Chris Woodrich
An illustration from 1896 edition of James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Set during the French and Indian War, the novel details the transport of two young women to Fort William Henry. Among the caravan guarding the women are the frontiersman Natty Bumppo, the Major Duncan Heyward, and the Indians Chingachgook and Uncas. In this scene, Bumppo (disguised as a bear) fights against the novel's villain, Magua, as two of his compatriots look on.
More selected pictures
Image 10
Ivanhoe
Engraver: J. Cooper; Restoration: Adam Cuerden
"Le Noir Faineant in the Hermit's Cell", an illustration from an 1886 edition of Sir Walter Scott's 1819 novel Ivanhoe. Here, we see Le Noir Faineant, or the Black Knight (Richard the Lionheart in disguise) with Friar Tuck. Scott was an early pioneer in the development of the modern novel, and largely created the genre of historical fiction by weaving together legends and characters into his own creations. Ivanhoe, the story of one of the remaining Saxon noble families at a time when the English nobility was overwhelmingly Norman, was greatly influential on the modern view of the English folk hero Robin Hood, and has inspired many adaptations around the world in theatre, opera, film, and television.
More selected pictures
Image 11
The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby
Artist: Jessie Willcox Smith; Restoration: ErikTheBikeMan
Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, a character named after the Golden Rule, from The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, a children's novel by Charles Kingsley. Published in 1863, the book was extremely popular in England, and was a mainstay of British children's literature for many decades. The book had been intended in part as a satire, a tract against child labour, as well as a serious critique of the closed-minded approaches of many scientists of the day in their response to Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution.
More selected pictures
Image 12
Œnone
Illustration: William Edward Frank Britten; restoration: Adam Cuerden
Œnone 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".
More selected pictures
Image 13
Caterpillar, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Artist: Sir John Tenniel
Sir 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.
More selected pictures
Image 14
Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith
Artist: Francis S. Walker; Engraving: Brothers Dalziel
Restoration: Adam Cuerden
Hermann Vezin in the title role of Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith, an 1876 play by W. S. Gilbert. In the story, Druce begins as a miser and drunkard whose wife has left him. Two army deserters find shelter at his house, but they rob him and abandon a baby girl there. Many years later, Druce has become a blacksmith, and the two men return to try to claim the girl. The play was a success, running for about 100 performances and enjoying tours and several revivals.
More selected pictures
Image 15
Guy Mannering
Artist: Norman Mills Price; Restoration: Adam Cuerden
A scene from Chapter XXVII of Guy Mannering, a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott that was originally published anonymously in 1815. It is set in the 1760s to 1780s, mostly in the Galloway area of southwest Scotland. The eponymous character of Guy Mannering is actually only a minor character in the story, the plot being mostly concerned with Harry Bertram, the son of the Laird of Ellangowan, who is kidnapped at the age of five by smugglers. It follows the fortunes and adventures of Harry and his family in subsequent years, and the struggle over the inheritance of Ellangowan. The novel also depicts the lawlessness that existed at the time, when smugglers operated along the coast and thieves frequented the country roads. The book was a huge success, selling out the day after its first edition.
More selected pictures

Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

... that some works by the Baltic-German writer Laura Marholm were part of "feminist literary criticism", known as gynocriticism, 70 years before the term was coined?
... that the 1972 manga series The Poe Clan was among the first works of vampire literature to depict vampires as romantic and tragic rather than predatory?
... that The Tale of Genji's Kaoru Genji has been called literature's first antihero?
... that the founders of the literary journal Irreantum hoped it would become the source for nationwide publishers to access the best of Mormon literature?
... that conte, a literary genre which includes fairy tales and philosophical stories, became merged with the short story in the 1800s?
... that Al-Wishah fi Fawa'id al-Nikah, a 15th-century Islamic sex manual by Egyptian writer Al-Suyuti, was based on both traditional hadith literature and material influenced by Indian erotology?

Today in literature

15 January

1622 - Molière, French playwright born
1674 - Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon, French writer born
1747 - John Aikin, English doctor and writer born
1791 - Franz Grillparzer, Austrian writer born
1850 - Mihai Eminescu, Romanian poet born
1872 - Arsen Kotsoyev, Russian writer born
1879 - Mazo de la Roche, Canadian author born
1885 - Huang Yuanyong, Chinese writer born
1891 - Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet born
1923 - Ivor Cutler, Scottish poet born
1933 - Ernest J. Gaines, American author born
1955 - Nigel Benson, British author born
2005 - Walter Ernsting, German author died
2005 - Elizabeth Janeway, American author died

Archive (January)

Topics

Literature:	History of literature · History of the book · Literary criticism · Literary theory · Publishing
By genre:	Biography · Comedy · Drama · Epic · Erotic · Fable · Fantasy · Historical fiction · Horror · Mystery · Narrative nonfiction · Nonsense · Lyric · Mythopoeia · Poetry · Romance · Satire · Science fiction · Tragedy · Tragicomedy · more...
By region:	African literature · Asian · European · Latin American · North American · Oceanic
By era:	Ancient literature · Early medieval · Medieval · Renaissance · Early Modern · Modern
By century:	10th century in literature · 11th · 12th · 13th · 14th · 15th · 16th · 17th · 18th · 19th · 20th · 21st
Recent:	2018 in literature· 2017 · 2016 · 2015 · 2014 · 2013 · 2012 · 2011 · 2010 · 2009 · 2008 · 2007 · more...

v t e Literary composition
General topics	Literature Fiction writing Writer Characterization Exposition Description Writer's block
Techniques / devices	Linguistic contrast Literary contrast Trope Idiom Cliché
Methods	Writing process Mimesis Plagiarism Cut-up technique Pastiche Assemblage Diegesis
Features	Writing style Stylistics Writer's voice Grammatical mood Tone Register Rhetorical modes
Forms	Novel Screenplay Short story Poetry Essay Joke Creative nonfiction
Beyond the arts	Composition studies Technical writing Articulation (sociological)

Related portals

Portals related to literature

Concepts:	Books Novels Poetry Theatre Writing
Genres:	Children and Young Adult Literature Speculative fiction
Religions:	Bible

Things you can do

Create:	Requested literature articles · Requested photographs of writers · Requested photographs of publications
Expand:	Literature stubs · Writer stubs · Start class literature articles · C class literature articles · Literature lists
Polish:	B class literature articles
More:	Open tasks at WikiProject Literature

Related WikiProjects

WikiProjects related to literature:

Concepts:	Biographies · Books · Comics · Magazines · Manga · Novels · Poetry · Short stories · Translation studies
Genres:	Alternate history · Children's literature · Crime · Fantasy · Horror · Mythology · Romance · Science fiction
Authors:	Honoré de Balzac · Roald Dahl · William Shakespeare
Series:	Artemis Fowl · Chronicles of Narnia · Discworld · Harry Potter · His Dark Materials · Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy · Inheritance Cycle · James Bond · King Arthur · Middle-earth · Percy Jackson · Redwall · A Series of Unfortunate Events · Shannara · Sherlock Holmes · A Song of Ice and Fire · Star Wars · Sword of Truth · Twilight · Warriors · Water Margin · Wizard of Oz
Regions:	Australian literature · Indian literature · Persian literature