Bloom set of 8

Mark Twain

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, created some of the most enduring images of place, character, and ethos, which readers identify as particularly American. This text examines the life and work of the author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a novel in which the protagonist has been said to personify American solitude. Learn more about Twain through an extensive biography, analysis from renowned critics, and more.

John Milton

One of England's greatest poets, John Milton is acknowledged by admirers and detractors alike for his sublime imaginative works that span heaven and hell, and which include biblical heroes, newsmakers of his time, and the Christian Messiah. Doctor Samuel Johnson praised Milton's "copiousness and variety," as well as his "melodious words" with which he expressed his imagination (and conviction) in memorable verse.

J.R.R. Tolkien

W.E.B. Du Bois

Victorian Novel

The Victorian Age, which spans the years of Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901) generated an immense amount of creative energy, as demonstrated in the enormous productivity of the English novelists. Major influential authors, including Charles Dickens, The Brontes, Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Thomas Hardy all appeared during this prolific period. This was the first time in which the novel attained the critical esteem of other types of literature, and surpassed them in popular appeal. The rich and varied Victorian novels, which reflect the complexity of such a paradoxical and influential epoch, hold significant, timely appeal for the modern reader.

Don Quixote

Read the worldwide classic Don Quixote, considered one of the greatest works of fiction, and the most influential work of literature in the Spanish literary canon.

Paradise Lost

God and Christ in Paradise Lost embody reason and restraint—but a poet is by necessity of the party of energy and desire; reason and restraint cannot furnish the stuff of creativity. So Milton, as a true poet, wrote at liberty when he portrayed Devils and Hell, and in fetters when he described Angels and God. For Hell is the active life springing from energy, and Heaven only the passive existence that obeys reason.

Ulysses

Although the import of the Odyssey upon Ulysses has received a wide range of critical opinion, Ulysses is indeed Joyce's epic. Homer provides the underlying paradigm, used for the depiction of a very non-heroic day in an equally non-heroic world, with an "Odysseus-like" character who is very much an ordinary citizen.