BookRags Essays

A.A. Milne (1882-1956) worked as an essayist, a playwright, a poet, and an adult novelist, in addition to his important contribution as an author of juvenile books. Although he attempted to excel in all literary genres, he was master of Ch...

[Yehoshua] brings to his plays a knack for structural compactness, for manipulation of character and for creating a sense of an impending turning point. All these dramatic commodities are dynamically galvanized by a dialogue that rapidly al...

The legacy of leading Australian poet A. D. Hope to world literature is unquestionable, comprising eleven books of poetry, seven collections of critical essays, and two plays. His writing, compelling in its originality and passion, and rig...

Alfred Edward Housman was the greatest English classical scholar of his time and a poet of great ability and mastery within the limitations of his chosen themes and form. A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896 at the author's expense, became ...

A. J. Cronin was a novelist, dramatist, and nonfiction writer whose works examine moral conflicts between the individual and society as his idealistic heroes pursue justice for the common man. His moralistic novels are known by the public ...

A. L. Kennedy is one of the most consistently energetic and critically acclaimed novelists to have emerged from Scotland in the closing years of the twentieth century. Since the early 1990s she has produced novels, collections of short sto...

A. R. Gurney is one of the few major playwrights to emerge in the 1960s and maintain a flourishing stage career four decades later. His plays continue to be performed widely Off-Broadway and in resident, summer stock, community, and academ...

The Garden-of-Live-Flowers incident in the Alice-mythos anticipates the method of the modern detection-fan. To find the Red Queen he has learnt to go in the most unlikely direction. So now the hard-pressed writer is inclined to try a double...

Being True To Myself "She was always a hard worker. Always. That was just her." ~Timberland Aaliyah Dana Haughton was more than just a one hit wonder, she was a woman with a true talent for singing, acting and being an indi...

SOURCE: Yeats, W. B. “Irish National Drama.” In The Abbey Theatre: Interviews and Recollections, edited by E. H. Mikhail, pp. 98-100. London, United Kingdom: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1988. In the following interview, originally published i...

Structure: In `Abigail's Party' there is a gradual introduction of characters starting with Beverly, then Lawrence arrives shortly followed by the rest of the cast; Tony and Angela and then Sue. This allows each character to be fully i...

As an American, one is entitled to all the rights and privileges of a citizen. One can vote, hold office, drive any vehicle or own land. However, at one point in time African Americans were not entitled to these basic rights and principles ...

In the past Natives were victims of injustice by the Canadian government, were often mistreated, and had few rights. The Canadian government took away their land and forced them to move on to small reservation areas elsewhere. Europeans ...

The topic of abortion is an extremely important one. There are quite a few different views on this subject. Some people believe that abortion is a good thing and should be supported, while others think that abortion should be illegal and ...

Abortion is the ending of a pregnancy by the removal of the foetus from the uterus before it is mature enough to live independently. This medical process occurred before the birth of Australia and has continued ever since. Although it is un...

No state shall...deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" is said in the clause of the fourteenth amendment. Abortion should remain legal. The issue of abortion has been a very important, controversial...

The Jewish author and journalist Abraham Cahan (1860-1951) was a prominent Socialist leader and union organizer among Jewish immigrants in the United States. Abraham Cahan was born in Podberezhie, near Vilna, Lithuania. His father was a st...

Sixteenth president of the United States and president during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was immortalized by his Emancipation Proclamation, his Gettysburg Address, and two outstanding inaugural addresses. Abraham Lincoln wa...

Abraham Polonsky's importance as a screenwriter rests both on his body of work--one of the strongest, continuously radical political statements in commercial American film--and on his role as symbol of the oppressed Hollywood writer, drive...

SOURCE: "Fathers and Sons: The Norative Basis of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel," in Papers on Language & Literature, Vol. 17, No. 4, Fall 1981, pp. 363-80. In the following excerpt, Donnelly demonstrates that in Absalom and Achitophel, Dr...

"Absence and the unfond heart: why people are less giving than they might be," Judith Lichtenberg successfully conveys her moral theory with many questions regarding her topics of abstractness, the sense of futility and ineffectiveness, ...

Colin MacInnes's little known trilogy of London novels comprises vividly composed fictions of the underside of London life. In City of Spades (1957), Absolute Beginners (1959), and Mr. Love and Justice (1960), autonomous fictions linked by ...

The media can teach many life lessons. For instance, I have learned that Princess Diana was one of the most influential people of the twentieth century, and I have also learned that a priest can't be trusted alone with children. The media h...

Power is defined as a political or national strength; strength might force or possession or control over others authority. Power is apparent in every society all over the world, whether its your teacher in the classroom or your states premi...

SOURCE: An introduction to The Izayoi Nikki, in Translations from Early Japanese Literature, Harvard University Press, 1951, pp. 3-51. In the following excerpt, first published in 1947, Reischauer places the Izayoi Nikki in historical conte...