E. Annie Proulx (born 1935) won the 1993 PEN/Faulkner Award for her novel Postcards and a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for her next novel, The Shipping News. While she was certainly not an overnight sensation, having written stories from the age...

E. E. Cummings's experimentation with form and language places him among the most innovative of twentieth-century poets. His style eludes specific association with any one modern line. He was applauded by such various poets as Ezra Pound, ...

One of the most celebrated and controversial novelists of the past two decades, E. L. Doctorow has an uncanny ability to reach both the general audience (The Book of Daniel, Welcome to Hard Times, and Ragtime have been made into movies) an...

During the Edwardian years and into the 1920s, E. M. Forster consolidated his reputation as a novelist of distinction and as a persuasive man of letters. He attained the greatest recognition and authority after World War II when, except fo...

Released in 1981, Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial touched the emotions and the collective imagination of moviegoers of all ages, breaking all previous box-office records to become the most profitable film of its time u...

SOURCE: "Novelists and the Drama," in American Playwrights of Today, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1929, pp. 211-29. In the following excerpt, Mantle comments on Biggers's early stage career. Earl Derr Biggers figures that he is one of the luckier ...

Since the 1920s, Alfred Earle Birney has become a venerated literary figure. Throughout his career Birney has done more than most writers to legitimize and consolidate what is often considered a mésalliance between Canadian academic...

A great deal happens in [Early Spring], not much of it very remarkable. Of course, the cinema simply cannot avoid a level of detail unattainable in the most painstakingly naturalistic literature. However, the 'suspense' of the main plot of ...

In East of Eden, John Steinbeck's narrator explores good and evil in three generations of Americans. Each time a character overcomes their extremely pure or horribly corrupt fate, he disproves destiny. Throughout the novel, Steinbeck's use ...

SOURCE: "Empire of the Mind and Heart," in Saturday Review, Vol. 41, No. 47, November 22, 1958, pp. 15-6. In the following review, Smith argues that Buck's half of Friend to Friend is more penetrating than that of Carlos Romulo because it a...

During an interview in 1979, Eavan Boland renounced "the evasion out of fear from some realities, and the folly of that evasion, because the realities catch up with you." Appropriately, she spoke of reality in the plural, for in her five v...

Humans have always sought to bring order and stability to their lives. From the earliest times, ancient people were drawn to the majesty and permanence of the heavens. Over time, early societies attached religious and spiritual significan...

Environmental literacy and ecocriticism refer to the work of educators, scholars, and writers to foster a critical understanding about environmental issues. Environmental literacy includes educational materials and programs designed to p...

SOURCE: A review of Ecstasy in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 9, No. 406, June 7, 1996, pp. 37–38. In the following review, Kane gives Ecstasy a lukewarm appraisal. In contrast to the interpretation of Welsh as a realistic chronicler of th...

Edward Dorn, one of the poets that emerged from legendary Black Mountain College in the 1950s, was born in Villa Grove, Illinois. He attended the University of Illinois and Eastern Illinois University before going to Black Mountain in 1951...

SOURCE: A review of A Heap o' Livin', in The Dial, Vol. 61, November 2, 1916, p. 355. In the following excerpt, a reviewer warmly praises Guest's verse. There is one glory of the new poetry, and another of the old-fashioned sort, and anothe...

SOURCE: Kauffmann, Stanley. “Wait a While.” New Republic 217, no. 17 (27 October 1997): 26-7. In the following excerpt, Kauffmann comments on the predictability of The Edge. This, as it turns out, is National Forbearance Week—anyway, ...

Although the classification is difficult and imprecise, the first Chinese American writer to publish fiction and journalism is conventionally understood to be Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton). At a time when few other writers of Asian ances...

If Edmond Rostand is known throughout the world today, it is for his play Cyrano de Bergerac (1897; translated, 1921). Although he wrote a total of seven plays and three volumes of poetry, he has been remembered through the years for the "...

The scene [of The Case of the Gilded Fly] is war-time Oxford, and … concerns the activities of a repertory company…. The final sentence of the opening chapter tells the reader what will happen before October 18th: by that day, out of th...

To understand Edmund Spenser's place in the extraordinary literary renaissance that took place in England during the last two decades of Queen Elizabeth I's reign, it is helpful to begin with the remarks of the foremost literary critic of ...

Edmund White is a master stylist who has produced acclaimed novels, intrepid and insightful nonfiction on gay society, and semi- autobiographical novels that combine the best features of fiction and nonfiction. Known as a "gay writer," Whi...

American author Edna Ferber (1887-1968) wrote popular fiction and collaborated on several successful Broadway plays. Born in Kalamazoo, Mich., Edna Ferber at an early age moved with her family to Appleton, Wis., where she spent most of her...

SOURCE: "Postsymbolists" in Soviet Poets and Poetry, University of California Press, 1943, pp. 35-97. In the following excerpt, Kaun discusses the sources, plot, and stylistic features of the Lay of Opanas, praising Bagritsky's work for its...

Westermarck, Edward Alexander(1862–1939) Edward Alexander Westermarck is best known as an anthropologist and sociologist; he is important in philosophy, however, as an exponent of a subjectivist theory of ethics, which he illustrate...