Collected Poems (1953) offers a rich survey of Aiken's poetry. Presenting Aiken's poetry in chronological order, this volume enables readers to see the development of recurrent themes, images, and concerns and the way Aiken varies and transforms them.

In Jacob's Room (1922), a short novel about a young man killed in World War I, Virginia Woolf attempts to tell the story of his life through a series of scenes presented as if viewed from outside and without the help of an organizing and orienting narrator.

In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” published in Prufrock and Other Observations in 1917, T. S. Eliot gives his sense of the devitalized nature of early-twentieth-century sensibility by creating a portrait of a character with a listless personality, portrayed through a series of images.

Henry Roth's Call It Sleep (1934) is an autobiographical novel recounting his brutal...