The “formalist” approach to literature says, among other things, that the author's opinion of what a piece of writing means is no more or...

Fanny Burney is only the sixth woman, out of 56 books so far, whose work appears on the “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die” list,...

I find “A Sentimental Journey Through France And Italy” a trifle confusing. This may be due to the fact that Laurence Sterne never...

At the end of Volume 6 of this work, Mr. Shandy as the teller of his own life story provides a drawing of his narrative line over the...

In many cases (though certainly not all), the most influential works of art took the shortest amount of time to produce. Take “Candide”....

The older I get, the less patience I have with fools. A great many people besides me get impatient with fools, of course. The surprise to...

John Arbuthnot, John Gay, Thomas Parnell, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift. Wow. Why so many authors? There was a society in Britain...

At roughly 20 pages, this may be the shortest item on "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" – we'll see. If we measure by the amount...

Among the most famous images that literature has given rise to – along with the skinny knight charging at windmills on horseback and the...

Jonathan Swift led a disappointed life in many ways, and with all due respect, after reading "A Tale Of A Tub" and learning something...

Not too many authors have seen their very names add words to the English language. There's Kafka and Lovecraft and a few others, but even...

I learned a lot of Jewish history growing up – slavery in Egypt, the Temples and their destruction, millennia of exile, the Holocaust....