Literature is any collection ofwritten work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be anart form, especiallynovels,plays, andpoems. It includes both print anddigital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to includeoral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmittingknowledge andentertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
Image 16AuthorMargaret Atwood has suggested that during the 1970s Canadian literature was still looking for a national identity.. (fromCanadian literature)
Image 17Jikji,Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Seon Masters, the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, 1377.Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. (fromHistory of books)
Image 56The oldest known love poem. Sumerianterracotta tablet#2461 from Nippur, Iraq. Ur III period, 2037–2029 BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul (fromHistory of poetry)
Image 60Estimated medieval output of manuscripts in terms of copies (fromMedieval literature)
Image 61Hemingway's telegram in 1954 (The academy has alternately usedfor Literature andin Literature over the years, the latter becoming the norm today.) (fromNobel Prize in Literature)
Image 68Number of children's books titles published by the trade sector in 2020 (fromChildren's literature)
Image 69In 1901, French poet and essayistSully 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." (fromNobel Prize in Literature)
Image 87Statuta Mutine Reformata, 1420–1485; parchmentcodex bound in wood and leather with brass plaques worked the corners and in the center, with clasps. (fromMedieval literature)
Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X was published in 1965, the result of a collaboration between human rights activistMalcolm X and journalistAlex Haley. Haleycoauthored the autobiography based on a series of in-depth interviews he conducted between 1963 and Malcolm X's 1965 assassination. TheAutobiography is aspiritual conversion narrative that outlines Malcolm X's philosophy ofblack pride,black nationalism, andpan-Africanism. After the death of his subject Haley authored the book's epilogue, which describes their collaboration and summarizes the end of Malcolm X's life.
While Malcolm X and scholars contemporary to the book's publication regarded Haley as the book'sghostwriter, modern scholars tend to regard him as an essential collaborator who intentionally muted his authorial voice to allow readers to feel as though Malcolm X were speaking directly to them. Haley also influenced some of Malcolm X's literary choices; for example, when Malcolm X left theNation of Islam during the composition of the book, Haley persuaded him to favor a style of "suspense and drama" rather than rewriting earlier chapters into apolemic against the Nation. Furthermore, Haley's proactive censorship of the manuscript'santisemitic material significantly influenced the ideological tone of theAutobiography, increasing its commercial success and popularity although distorting Malcolm X's public persona.
Gilbert's creative output included over 75 plays andlibretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious. After brief careers as a government clerk and a lawyer, Gilbert began to focus, in the 1860s, on writing light verse, including hisBab Ballads, short stories, theatre reviews and illustrations, often forFun magazine. He also began to writeburlesques and his first comic plays, developing a unique absurdist, inverted style that would later be known as his "topsy-turvy" style. He also developed arealistic method of stage direction and a reputation as a strict theatre director. In the 1870s, Gilbert wrote 40 plays and libretti, including hisGerman Reed Entertainments, several blank-verse "fairy comedies", some serious plays, and his first five collaborations with Sullivan:Thespis,Trial by Jury,The Sorcerer,H.M.S. Pinafore andThe Pirates of Penzance. In the 1880s, Gilbert focused on the Savoy operas, includingPatience,Iolanthe,The Mikado,The Yeomen of the Guard andThe Gondoliers. (Full article...)
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Daguerreotype taken at Mount Holyoke, December 1846 or early 1847; only authenticated portrait of Dickinson after early childhood.
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures inAmerican poetry.
Dickinson was born inAmherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at theAmherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended theMount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's home in Amherst. Evidence suggests that Dickinson lived much of her life in isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a penchant for white clothing and was known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even to leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most of her friendships were based entirely upon correspondence. (Full article...)
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Barney in 1898
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted aliterary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors through her salon and also with her poetry, plays, andepigrams, often thematically tied to her lesbianism andfeminism.
Barney was born into a wealthy family. She was partly educated in France, and expressed a desire from a young age to live openly as a lesbian. She moved to France with her first romantic partner,Eva Palmer. Inspired by the work ofSappho, Barney began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900. Writing in both French and English, she supported feminism andpacifism. She opposedmonogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poetRenée Vivien and courtesanLiane de Pougy and longer relationships with writerÉlisabeth de Gramont and painterRomaine Brooks. (Full article...)
Born inYate, Gloucestershire, Rowling was working as a researcher and bilingual secretary forAmnesty International in 1990 when she conceived the idea for theHarry Potter series. The seven-year period that followed saw the death of her mother, the birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and relative poverty until the first novel in the series,Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was published in 1997. Six sequels followed, concluding withHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). By 2008,Forbes had named her the world's highest-paid author. (Full article...)
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole,CBE (13 March 1884 – 1 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of anAnglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authorsHenry James andArnold 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 hisfirst 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 theRed Cross on theRussian-Austrian front, and worked in British propaganda inPetrograd 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...)
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Title page of the first edition of Wright'sCertaine Errors in Navigation (1599)
Edward Wright (baptised 8 October 1561; died November 1615) was an English mathematician andcartographer noted for his bookCertaine Errors in Navigation (1599; 2nd ed., 1610), which for the first time explained the mathematical basis of theMercator projection by building on the works ofPedro Nunes, and set out a reference table giving the linear scale multiplication factor as a function oflatitude, calculated for eachminute of arc up to a latitude of 75°. This was in fact a table of values of theintegral of the secant function, and was the essential step needed to make practical both the making and the navigational use of Mercator charts.
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa (28 March 1936 – 13 April 2025) was a Peruvian novelist, journalist, essayist and politician. Vargas Llosa was one of the most significant Latin American novelists and essayists and one of the leading writers of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a more substantial international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of theLatin American Boom.In 2010, he won theNobel Prize in Literature for "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat".
Vargas Llosa rose to international fame in the 1960s with novels such asThe Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, 1963/1966),The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumentalConversation in The Cathedral (Conversación en La Catedral, 1969/1975). He wrote prolifically across variousliterary genres, includingliterary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. He won the 1967Rómulo Gallegos Prize and the 1986Prince of Asturias Award. Several of his works have been adopted as feature films, such asCaptain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) andAunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982). Vargas Llosa's perception of Peruvian society and his experiences as a native Peruvian influenced many of his works. Increasingly, he expanded his range and tackled themes from other parts of the world. In his essays, Vargas Llosa criticizednationalism in different parts of the world. (Full article...)
Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in theU.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestsellerThe 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 byThe Edge of the Seain 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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Posthumous portrait
Du Fu (Chinese:杜甫;pinyin:Dù Fǔ;Wade–Giles:Tu Fu; 712–770) was a Chinese poet and politician during theTang dynasty. Together with his elder contemporary and friendLi Bai, Du is often considered one of the greatestChinese poets of his time. His greatest ambition was to serve his country as a successfulcivil servant, but Du proved unable to make the necessary accommodations. His life, like all of China, was devastated by theAn Lushan rebellion of 755, and his last 15 years were a time of almost constant unrest.
Although initially he was little-known to other writers, his works came to be hugely influential in bothChinese andJapanese literary culture. Of his poetic writing, nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages. He has been called the "Poet-Historian" and the "Poet-Sage" by Chinese critics, while the range of his work has allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as "the ChineseVirgil,Horace,Ovid,Shakespeare,Milton,Burns,Wordsworth,Béranger,Hugo orBaudelaire". (Full article...)
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow.
... that inJuliet H. Lewis Campbell's novelEros and Antieros the hero raises and marries the daughter of his unrequited love?
... that protests were organized against and calls were made out to expel writerEkrem Eylisli from his nativeAzerbaijan following the publication of hisnovella?
An illustration from the first edition ofThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz, depicting the scene whereDorothy meets theCowardly Lion, the first time the four major characters of the novel come together. The book was originally published in 1900 and has since been reprinted countless times, most often under the nameThe Wizard of Oz, which is the name of both the 1902 Broadwaymusical and the extremely popular, highly acclaimed1939 film version. Thanks in part to the film it is one of the best-known stories in American popular culture and has been widely translated. Its initial success, and the success of the popular 1902 musical Baum adapted from his story, led to his writing and having published thirteen moreOz books.
An illustration ofHumpty Dumpty by American artistWilliam Wallace Denslow, depicting the title character from thenursery 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 ariddle. The earliest known version is in a manuscript addition to a copy ofMother Goose's Melody published in 1803.
The Song of Los is an epic poem byWilliam Blake first published in 1795 and considered part of hisprophetic books. The poem consists of two sections, "Africa" and "Asia": in the first section Blake catalogues the decline of morality in Europe, which he blames on both the African slave trade and enlightenment philosophers, whereas in the second section he describes a worldwide revolution, urged by the eponymousLos.
The illustration here is from the book'sfrontispiece and showsUrizen presiding over the decline of morality.
Rootabaga Stories is a children's book of interrelated short stories byCarl Sandburg, written in 1922. The stories are whimsical and sometimes melancholy, making use of nonsense language.Rootabaga Stories was originally created for Sandburg's own daughters, Margaret, Janet and Helga—whom he nicknamed "Spink", "Skabootch", and "Swipes"—and those nicknames occur in some of the Rootabaga stories. The book was born of Sandburg's desire for fairy tales to which American children could relate, rather than the traditional European stories involving royalty and knights. He therefore set the book in a fictionalizedAmerican Midwest called the "Rootabaga country", in which fairy-tale concepts were mixed with trains, sidewalks, and skyscrapers.
This picture shows the frontispiece of the 1922 edition of the book.
Jeeves is a fictional character in a series ofcomedic short stories and novels by English authorP. G. Wodehouse, in which he is depicted as the highly competentvalet of a wealthy and idle young Londoner namedBertie Wooster. First appearing in the short story "Extricating Young Gussie" in 1915, Jeeves continued to feature in Wodehouse's work until his last completed novel,Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974). He also appeared in numerous films and television series, portrayed by such actors asArthur Treacher,Michael Aldridge, andDennis Price. The name and character of Jeeves have come to be identified with the quintessential valet orbutler.
A scene from a late-16th century publication ofNezami Ganjavi's adaptation of the classicalPersian storyLayla and Majnun, which is based on the real story of Qays ibn al-Mulawwah, a young man from the northernArabian Peninsula and his love Layla. There are two versions of the story, but in both, Majnun goes mad when her father prevents him from marrying her. In the depicted scene, the eponymousstar-crossed lovers meet for the last time before their deaths. Both have fainted and Majnun's elderly messenger attempts to revive Layla while wild animals protect the pair from unwelcome intruders.
William Wallace Denslow's illustration of thepoem "The Queen of Hearts" from a 1901 issue ofMother Goose. The poem was originally published in 1782 as part of a set of fourplaying card based poems, but proved to be far more popular than the others. By 1785 it had been set to music, and it forms the basis of the plot ofLewis Carroll'sAlice in Wonderland, Chapter XI: "Who Stole the Tarts?" Although it was originally published in a magazine for adults, it is now best known as anursery rhyme.
The Hunting of the Snark is a poem composed by the English writerLewis Carroll between 1874 and 1876, typically characterised as anonsense poem. The plot follows a crew of ten who cross the ocean to hunt theSnark, which may turn out to be a highly dangerous Boojum. This is the second ofHenry 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 wolf blows down the straw house in a 1904 adaptation ofThree Little Pigs, afairy tale featuringanthropomorphic animals. Printed versions date back to the 1840s, but the story itself is thought to be much older. The story in its arguably best-known form appeared inEnglish Fairy Tales byJoseph Jacobs, first published in 1890. The phrases used in the story, and the various morals which can be drawn from it, have become embedded in western culture. The story uses the literaryrule of three, expressed in this case as a "contrasting three", as the third pig's brick house turns out to be the only one which is adequate to withstand the wolf.
"The Sleeping Beauty" is a poem written byAlfred, Lord Tennyson, and published in 1830; it was later expanded and published in 1842 as "The Day-Dream". Based on the fairy taleSleeping Beauty, the poem (as with many of Tennyson's adaptations of existing literary works) focuses on a single aspect of the story, the appearance of the eponymous character as she sleeps.
This illustration byW. E. F. Britten was published in 1901 to accompany a reprinting of "The Sleeping Beauty". It accompanies the poem's final lines: "She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells / A perfect form in perfect rest."
A scene fromOscar Wilde's 1895 playAn Ideal Husband, originally published in a 1901 collected edition of Wilde's works. Thecomedy, which openedJanuary 3, 1896, at theHaymarket Theatre inLondon, revolves aroundblackmail andpolitical corruption, and touches on the themes of public and privatehonour. 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 writtenstage directions and character descriptions. Wilde was a leader in the effort to make plays accessible to the reading public.
In this scene fromLaurence Sterne'sThe Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Uncle Toby's colonel invents a device for firing multiple miniaturecannons at once, based on ahookah. 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 greatestcomic novels in English, as well as a forerunner for many modern narrative devices and styles.
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