Portal:Literature

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The Literature Portal

Introduction

The Library of the Palais Bourbon in Paris

Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. 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. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.

Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. "Literature", as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit, but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject. (Full article...)

General images -

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

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  Wole Soyinka, the first African writer awarded the prize. (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  The first page of Beowulf (from Medieval literature)
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  Goethe's Italian Journey between September 1786 and May 1788 (from Travel literature)
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  Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 CE. (from History of books)
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  Handwritten notes by Christopher Columbus on a Latin edition of The Travels of Marco Polo (from Travel literature)
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  Children's books author Maria Elena Walsh in 1952. (from Children's literature)
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  The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from Tang dynasty China, i.e. 868 CE, the oldest known dated printed book in the world (British Library) (from History of books)
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  Estimated medieval output of manuscripts in terms of copies (from Medieval literature)
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  Peruvian poet César Vallejo, considered by Thomas Merton "the greatest universal poet since Dante" (from Latin American literature)
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  A 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
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  Ivan Bilibin (1876–1942)'s illustration of the Russian fairy tale about Vasilisa the Beautiful (from Fairy tale)
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  French author Albert Camus was the first African-born writer to receive the award. (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  Two people dressed up in costumes inspired by Willy Wonka (from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and the Hatter (from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) in London (from Children's literature)
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  The Story of Mankind (1921) by Hendrik van Loon, 1st Newbery Award winner (from Children's literature)
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  Statue 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)
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  Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, London (from Children's literature)
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  Cover of the Argentine children's magazine Billiken N° 1 (1919) (from Children's literature)
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  Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books)
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  Beauty and the Beast, illustration by Warwick Goble (from Fairy tale)
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  A poet with a few enraptured fans (from Performance poetry)
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  John Newbery's A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, originally published in 1744 (from Children's literature)
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  Short story writer Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. (from Canadian literature)
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  Hemingway's telegram in 1954 (The academy has alternately used for Literature and in Literature over the years, the latter becoming the norm today.) (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  The Nobel diploma awarded to Hermann Hesse in 1946. (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  H. O. Tanager performs at a bookstore in Boise, Idaho. (from Performance poetry)
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  Octavio Paz helped to define modern poetry and the Mexican personality. (from Latin American literature)
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  The Crescent Moon by Rabindranath Tagore illus. by Nandalal Bose, Macmillan 1913 (from Children's literature)
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  The oldest known love poem. Sumerian terracotta tablet#2461 from Nippur, Iraq. Ur III period, 2037–2029 BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul (from History of poetry)
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  A late 18th-century reprint of Orbis Pictus by Comenius, the first children's picture book. (from Children's literature)
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  The 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)
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  12-metre-high (40 ft) sculpture of a stack of books at the Berlin Walk of Ideas, commemorating the invention of modern book printing (from History of books)
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  A mother reads to her children in a mid- to late 19th century lithograph by Jessie Willcox Smith. (from Children's literature)
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  Galway Kinnell performing a poetic piece in Vermont (from Performance poetry)
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  Hop-o'-My-Thumb and the ogre in an 1865 illustration (from Fairy tale)
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  The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, c. 1275 BCE, ink and pigments on papyrus, in the British Museum (London) (from History of books)
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  The New England Primer (from Children's literature)
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  Pages from the 1819 edition of Kinder- und Haus-Märchen by the Brothers Grimm (from Children's literature)
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  European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (from History of books)
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  The 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)
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  Rudyard Kipling, the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books)
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  Statuta 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)
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  An early Chinese poetics, the Kǒngzǐ Shīlùn (孔子詩論), discussing the Shijing (Classic of Poetry) (from History of poetry)
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  Calliope, the muse of heroic poetry (from History of poetry)
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  Poet Charles G. D. Roberts belonged to an informal group known as the Confederation Poets. (from Canadian literature)
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  Kings' Fairy Tale, 1909, by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (from Fairy tale)
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  Chinese Bookseller, illustration, c. 1824 (from History of books)
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  Postal stamp of Russia celebrating children's books. (from Children's literature)
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  Page 49 of the Dresden Codex (from History of books)
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  An early Mexican hornbook pictured in Tuer's History of the Horn-Book, 1896. (from Children's literature)
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  Cutlery for children. Detail showing fairy-tale scenes: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel. (from Fairy tale)
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  Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books)
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  Statue of C. S. Lewis in front of the wardrobe from his Narnia book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (from Children's literature)
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  Jikji, 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)
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  The Violet Fairy Book (1906)
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  The Swedish Academy's permanent secretary Peter Englund at the announcement of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  The character which means "poetry", in the ancient Chinese Great Seal script style. The modern character is 詩/诗 (shī). (from History of poetry)
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  Number of children's books titles published by the trade sector in 2020 (from Children's literature)
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  An author portrait of Jean Miélot writing his compilation of the Miracles of Our Lady, one of his many popular works. (from History of books)
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  The philosopher Confucius was influential in the developed approach to poetry and ancient music theory. (from History of poetry)
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  European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books)
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  Hugo Ball performing at the Cabaret Voltaire (from Performance poetry)
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  The former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke (2015) (from Canadian literature)
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  John Bauer's illustration of trolls and a princess from a collection of Swedish fairy tales (from Fairy tale)
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  J. K. Rowling reads from her novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (from Children's literature)
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  Illustration from Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 pirate adventure Treasure Island (from Children's literature)
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  Gabriel García Márquez, one of the most renowned Latin American writers (from Latin American literature)
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  A Chinese bamboo book, The Art of War, commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor in 18th-century China (from History of books)
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  A 15th-century Incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (from History of books)
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  Illustration from the Codex Manesse, a German book from the Middle Ages (from History of books)
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  Father Frost acts as a donor in the Russian fairy tale Father Frost, testing the heroine before bestowing riches upon her (from Fairy tale)
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  Selma Lagerlöf, the first female author awarded the prize. (from Nobel Prize in Literature)
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  A Tagore illustration of a Hindu myth (from Children's literature)
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  The European fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in a painting by Carl Larsson in 1881. (from Fairy tale)
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  In 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)
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  Gabrielle Roy was a notable French Canadian author. (from Canadian literature)
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  A picture by Gustave Doré of Mother Goose reading written (literary) fairy tales (from Fairy tale)
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  Walter Crane's chromolithograph illustration for The Frog Prince, 1874. (from Children's literature)
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  1900 edition of the controversial The Story of Little Black Sambo (from Children's literature)
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  Illustration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865 (from Children's literature)
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  Roberto Bolaño is considered to have had the greatest United States impact of any post-Boom author (from Latin American literature)
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  A twentieth-century copyright imprint from McLoughlin Bros that features three rams and the copyright year, 1903 (from History of books)
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  Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books)
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  Natias Neutert performing Diogenes Synopsis as at Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, 1986 (from Performance poetry)
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  Sculpture of Alfonso Reyes writer of influential pieces of Mexican surrealism. (from Latin American literature)

Selected work

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

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The Man in the Moone is a book by the English divine and Church of England bishop Francis Godwin (1562–1633), describing a "voyage of utopian discovery". Initially considered to be one of his early works, it is now generally thought to have been written in the late 1620s. It was first published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales. The work is notable for its role in what was called the "new astronomy," the branch of astronomy influenced especially by Nicolaus Copernicus, the only astronomer mentioned by name, although the book also draws on the theories of Johannes Kepler, William Gilbert, and Galileo Galilei.

The work tells the story of Gonsales, a Spaniard who discovers a species of wild swan able to carry substantial loads, the gansa, and contrives a device that allows him to harness many of them together and fly around an island, and eventually, to the moon and back.

Some critics consider The Man in the Moone, along with Kepler's Somnium, to be one of the first works of science fiction. Although the book was well known in the 17th century, and even inspired parodies by Cyrano de Bergerac and Aphra Behn, modern literary critics do not consider it to be very important.

Selected biographies -

Featured articles are displayed here.

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  Carson in 1943

  
  Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, writer, and conservationist whose sea trilogy (1941–1955) and book Silent Spring (1962) are credited with advancing marine conservation and the global environmental movement.
  
  Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award, recognition as a gifted writer, and financial security. Its success prompted the republication of her first book, Under the Sea Wind (1941), in 1952, which was followed by The Edge of the Sea in 1955 — both were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths. (Full article...)
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  Achebe in Lagos, 1966

  
  Chinua Achebe (/ˈtʃɪnwɑː əˈtʃɛbeɪ/ ^ⓘ; born Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe; 16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His first novel and magnum opus, Things Fall Apart (1958), occupies a pivotal place in African literature and remains the most widely studied, translated, and read African novel. Along with Things Fall Apart, his No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964) complete the "African Trilogy". Later novels include A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). Achebe is often referred to as the "father of modern African literature", although he vigorously rejected the characterization.
  
  Born in Ogidi, Colonial Nigeria, Achebe's childhood was influenced by both Igbo traditional culture and colonial Christianity. He excelled in school and attended what is now the University of Ibadan, where he became fiercely critical of how Western literature depicted Africa. Moving to Lagos after graduation, he worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Service (NBS) and garnered international attention for his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart. In less than 10 years he would publish four further novels through the publisher Heinemann, with whom he began the Heinemann African Writers Series and galvanized the careers of African writers, such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Flora Nwapa. (Full article...)
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  Tolkien in the 1920s

  
  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (/ˈruːl ˈtɒlkiːn/, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
  
  From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and a Fellow of Pembroke College, both at the University of Oxford. He then moved within the same university to become the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, and held these positions from 1945 until his retirement in 1959. Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings. He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972. (Full article...)
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  Revised daguerreotype taken in 1842

  
  Honoré de Balzac (/ˈbælzæk/ BAL-zak, more commonly US: /ˈbɔːl-/ BAWL-; French: [ɔnɔʁe d(ə) balzak]; born Honoré Balzac; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus.
  
  Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well; the city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really the father of us all." (Full article...)
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  Portrait of Sarah Trimmer, 1798

  
  Sarah Trimmer (née Kirby; 6 January 1741 – 15 December 1810) was an English writer and critic of 18th-century British children's literature, as well as an educational reformer. Her periodical, The Guardian of Education, helped to define the emerging genre by seriously reviewing children's literature for the first time; it also provided the first history of children's literature, establishing a canon of the early landmarks of the genre that scholars still use today. Trimmer's most popular children's book, Fabulous Histories, inspired numerous children's animal stories and remained in print for over a century.
  
  Trimmer was also an active philanthropist. She founded several Sunday schools and charity schools in her parish. To further these educational projects, she wrote textbooks and manuals for women interested in starting their own schools. Trimmer's efforts inspired other women, such as Hannah More, to establish Sunday school programmes and to write for children and the poor. (Full article...)
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  Robert Marshall (January 2, 1901 – November 11, 1939) was an American forester, writer and wilderness activist who is best remembered as the person who spearheaded the 1935 founding of the Wilderness Society in the United States. Marshall developed a love for the outdoors as a young child. He was an avid hiker and climber who visited the Adirondack Mountains frequently during his youth, ultimately becoming one of the first Adirondack Forty-Sixers. He also traveled to the Brooks Range of the far northern Alaskan wilderness. He wrote numerous articles and books about his travels, including the bestselling 1933 book Arctic Village.
  
  A scientist with a PhD in plant physiology, Marshall became independently wealthy after the death of his father in 1929. He had started his outdoor career in 1925 as forester with the U.S. Forest Service. He used his financial independence for expeditions to Alaska and other wilderness areas. Later he held two significant public appointed posts: chief of forestry in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, from 1933 to 1937, and head of recreation management in the Forest Service, from 1937 to 1939, both during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. During this period, he directed the promulgation of regulations to preserve large areas of roadless land that were under federal management. Many years after his death, some of those areas were permanently protected from development, exploitation, and mechanization with the passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964. (Full article...)
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  Francis bin Fathallah bin Nasrallah Marrash (Arabic: فرنسيس بن فتح الله بن نصر الله مرّاش, ALA-LC: Fransīs bin Fatḥ Allāh bin Naṣr Allāh Marrāsh; 1835 or 29 June 1836 – 1874), also known as Francis al-Marrash or Francis Marrash al-Halabi, was a Syrian scholar, publicist, writer and poet of the Nahda or the Arab Renaissance, and a physician. Most of his works revolve around science, history and religion, analysed under an epistemological light. He traveled throughout West Asia and France in his youth, and after some medical training and a year of practice in his native Aleppo, during which he wrote several works, he enrolled in a medical school in Paris; yet, declining health and growing blindness forced him to return to Aleppo, where he produced more literary works until his early death.
  
  Historian Matti Moosa considered Marrash to have been the first truly cosmopolitan Arab intellectual and writer of modern times. Marrash adhered to the principles of the French Revolution and defended them in his own works, implicitly criticizing Ottoman rule in West Asia and North Africa. He was also influential in introducing French romanticism in the Arab world, especially through his use of poetic prose and prose poetry, of which his writings were the first examples in modern Arabic literature, according to Salma Khadra Jayyusi and Shmuel Moreh. His modes of thinking and feeling, and ways of expressing them, have had a lasting influence on contemporary Arab thought and on the Mahjari poets. (Full article...)
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  17th-century depiction of Murasaki by Tosa Mitsuoki

  
  Murasaki Shikibu (紫式部, 'Lady Murasaki'; c. 973 – c. 1014 or 1025) was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She was best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012. Murasaki Shikibu is a descriptive name; her personal name is unknown, but she may have been Fujiwara no Kaoruko (藤原香子), who was mentioned in a 1007 court diary as an imperial lady-in-waiting.
  
  Heian women were traditionally excluded from learning Chinese, the written language of government, but Murasaki, raised in her erudite father's household, showed a precocious aptitude for the Chinese classics and managed to acquire fluency. She married in her mid-to-late twenties and gave birth to a daughter, Daini no Sanmi. Her husband died after two years of marriage. It is uncertain when she began to write The Tale of Genji, but it was probably while she was married or shortly after she was widowed. In about 1005, she was invited to serve as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Shōshi at the Imperial court by Fujiwara no Michinaga, probably because of her reputation as a writer. She continued to write during her service, adding scenes from court life to her work. After five or six years, she left court and retired with Shōshi to the Lake Biwa region. Scholars differ on the year of her death; although most agree on 1014, others have suggested she was alive in 1025. (Full article...)
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  Pound photographed in 1913 by Alvin Langdon Coburn

  
  
  
  Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a collaborator in Fascist Italy and the Salò Republic during World War II. His works include Ripostes (1912), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and his 800-page epic poem The Cantos (c. 1917–1962).
  
  Pound's contribution to poetry began in the early 20th century with his role in developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as H. D., Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the 1915 publication of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and the serialization from 1918 of Joyce's Ulysses. Hemingway wrote in 1932 that, for poets born in the late 19th or early 20th century, not to be influenced by Pound would be "like passing through a great blizzard and not feeling its cold". (Full article...)
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  Walpole c. 1920–1925

  
  
  Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE (13 March 1884 – 1 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors Henry James and Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting and vivid plots, as well as his high profile as a lecturer, brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s but has been largely neglected since his death.
  
  After his first novel, The Wooden Horse, in 1909, Walpole wrote prolifically, producing at least one book every year. He was a spontaneous story-teller, writing quickly to get all his ideas on paper, seldom revising. His first novel to achieve major success was his third, Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, a tragicomic story of a fatal clash between two schoolmasters. During the First World War he served in the Red Cross on the Russian-Austrian front, and worked in British propaganda in Petrograd and London. In the 1920s and 1930s Walpole was much in demand not only as a novelist but also as a lecturer on literature, making four exceptionally well-paid tours of North America. (Full article...)

Selected excerpt

“ I don’t know why it should be so, but it is an undeniable fact that there is nothing makes a man look so supremely ridiculous as losing his hat. The feeling of helpless misery that shoots down one’s back on suddenly becoming aware that one’s head is bare is among the most bitter ills that flesh is heir to. And then there is the wild chase after it, accompanied by an excitable small dog, who thinks it is a game, and in the course of which you are certain to upset three or four innocent children—to say nothing of their mothers—butt a fat old gentleman on to the top of a perambulator, and carom off a ladies’ seminary into the arms of a wet sweep. ” — Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

More Did you know

• ... that Norwegian surrealist poet Triztán Vindtorn changed his first name into the name of his favorite pub?
• ... that The Six Wives of Henry VIII inspired Lecia Cornwall to write historical novels?
• ... that Stolen Childhood was the first full-length book on the history of children enslaved during the American slave-era?
• ... that the Indian poet and philosopher Dwijendranath Tagore wrote the book Boxometry about the construction of boxes?
• ... that The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five, a science fiction novel by Doris Lessing, was adapted for the opera in 1997 by Philip Glass?

Selected illustration

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  The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

  Illustration: George Cruikshank; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  In this scene from Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Uncle Toby's colonel invents a device for firing multiple miniature cannons at once, based on a hookah. Unfortunately, he and Toby find the puffing on the hookah pipe so enjoyable that they keep setting the cannons off. The novel was published in nine volumes over ten years, starting in 1759. Although it was not always held in high esteem by other writers, its bawdy humour was popular with London society, and it has come to be seen as one of the greatest comic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices and styles.
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  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.
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  Illustration by John Bauer

  Painting: John Bauer

  A watercolor illustration by John Bauer (1882–1918) titled "Still, Tuvstarr sits and gazes down into the water", which accompanied Helge Kjellin's fairy tale "The Tale of the Moose Hop and the Little Princess Cotton Grass" in the 1913 edition of Among Gnomes and Trolls. In this scene, Tuvstarr looks for her lost heart in a tarn, symbolizing innocence lost.
  
  Born and raised in Jönköping, Sweden, Bauer moved to Stockholm at age 16 to study at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts. He painted and illustrated in a romantic nationalistic style, in part influenced by the Italian Renaissance and Sami cultures. Most of his works are watercolors or prints in monochrome or muted colours; he also produced oil paintings and frescos.
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  Divine Comedy

  Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  An engraving of Charon, in Greek mythology the ferryman of Hades who carried souls of the newly deceased across the River Styx that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. This illustration is from French engraver Gustave Doré's 1857 set of illustrations for Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, an Italian epic poem depicting an allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife. Here, Charon is shown coming to ferry souls across the river Acheron to Hell. The caption is from Henry Francis Cary's translation, from which this particular copy is taken:
  
  And, lo! toward us in a bark
  Comes on an old man, hoary white with eld,
  Crying "Woe to you, wicked spirits!"
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  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.
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  An Ideal Husband

  Artist: Unknown; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  A scene from Oscar Wilde's 1895 play An Ideal Husband, originally published in a 1901 collected edition of Wilde's works. The comedy, which opened January 3, 1896, at the Haymarket Theatre in London, revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. It has been adapted into television, radio/audio, and three films. The published version differs slightly from the performed play, for Wilde added many passages and cut others. Prominent additions included written stage directions and character descriptions. Wilde was a leader in the effort to make plays accessible to the reading public.
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  Auld Lang Syne

  Engraving: John Masey Wright (artist) and John Rogers (engraver); restoration: Adam Cuerden

  A mid-19th century illustration for "Auld Lang Syne", a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to a traditional melody. It is traditionally used in the English-speaking world to bid farewell to the old year at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve; this has led to the song being used to close other activities as well.
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  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.
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  Rob Roy

  Engraving: Dalziel Brothers; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

  A scene from Sir Walter Scott's 1817 historical novel Rob Roy, which tells the story of Frank Osbaldistone, the son of an English merchant who travels to Scotland to collect a debt stolen from his father. On the way he encounters the larger-than-life title character of Robert Roy MacGregor. Though Rob Roy is not the lead character (in fact the narrative does not move to Scotland until halfway through the book) his personality and actions are key to the story's development. The novel is a brutally realistic depiction of the social conditions in Highland and Lowland Scotland in the early 18th century.
• 
  Puck of Pook's Hill

  Illustrator: Harold Robert Millar; restoration: Adam Cuerden

  An illustration from the story "The Winged Hats" from the first printing of Rudyard Kipling's 1906 fantasy book Puck of Pook's Hill, featuring the legend "'We dealt with them thoroughly through a long day'".
  
  The book consists of a number of stories, all narrated to two children living near Burwash, in the area of Kipling's own house Bateman's, by people magically plucked out of history by the elf Puck, or told by Puck himself.
  
  
• 
  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.
• 
  "Jabberwocky"

  Illustration: John Tenniel

  The Jabberwock, the titular creature of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky". First included in Carroll's novel Through the Looking-Glass (1871), the poem was illustrated by John Tenniel, who gave the creature "the leathery wings of a pterodactyl and the long scaly neck and tail of a sauropod". "Jabberwocky" is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English, and has contributed such nonsense words and neologisms as galumphing and chortle to the English lexicon.
• 
  The Hunting of the Snark

  Illustration credit: Henry Holiday, after Lewis Carroll; restored by Adam Cuerden

  The Hunting of the Snark is a poem composed by the English writer Lewis Carroll between 1874 and 1876, typically characterised as a nonsense poem. The plot follows a crew of ten who cross the ocean to hunt the Snark, which may turn out to be a highly dangerous Boojum. This is the second of Henry Holiday's original illustrations for the first edition of the poem. It introduces some of the crew, whose names all start with "B"; the Bellman and Baker are on the upper deck, with the Barrister seated in the background; below are the Billiard-marker, the Banker and the Broker, with the maker of Bonnets and Hoods visible behind.
• 
  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.
• 
  Suikoden

  Woodblock artist: Utagawa Kuniyoshi

  This woodblock print, titled Kinhyōshi yōrin, hero of the Suikoden, is one of a series created by the Japanese artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi between 1827 and 1830 illustrating the 108 Suikoden ("Water Margin"). The publication of the series catapulted Kuniyoshi to fame. The story of the Suikoden is an adaptation of the Chinese Shuǐhǔ Zhuàn; during the 1800s, the publication of this woodblock series and other translations of the novel created a Suikoden craze in Japan. Following the great commercial success of the Kuniyoshi series, other ukiyo-e artists were commissioned to produce prints of the Suikoden heroes, which began to be shown as Japanese heroes rather than the original Chinese personages. The hero portrayed in this print is Yang Lin.

Did you know (auto-generated) -

• ... that Romanian literary scholar Dan Simonescu, who edited a chronicle dealing with the reign of Michael the Brave, had to delete any mention of Michael having "all the Jews murdered"?
• ... that in her 2021 book The Origins of Early Christian Literature, Robyn Faith Walsh found that German Romanticists were in part responsible for modern scholarly assumptions about the gospels?
• ... that Walid Daqqa wrote several works of prison literature, including a children's novel about a boy who uses magical olive oil to visit his imprisoned father?
• ... that The Man Without Talent is an I-novel, a genre of semi-autobiographical confessional literature that has been popular in Japan since the early twentieth century?
• ... that the exclusive secret society Hamilton House from the television show Gossip Girl was based on St. Anthony Hall, a social and literary fraternity?
• ... that literary fiction novel Agatha of Little Neon's title stems from a house that is "the color of Mountain Dew"?

Today in literature

1 May

• 1829 - José de Alencar, Brazilian novelist born
• 1923 - Joseph Heller, American novelist born
• 1947 - Sergio Infante, Chilean poet and writer born
• 1954 - Joel Rosenberg, science fiction author born

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