Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe is an all-around well known American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe was most known for his poetry, short stories, and tales of horror and mystery. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809 and started writing at the age of 18. In 1836 he married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. He had many influences, styles, and accomplishments.
One very world wide known poem is “The Raven”, it has been an incredibly popular choice among readers for many years and will still be studied and enjoyed for future years to come. Not only does this form of Gothic Literature capture and inspire the heart, but it makes you feel and think deeply, and urges you to open your eyes with a different perspective. To summarize, In the beginning of the poem the narrator is reading to try and
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing – Benjamin Franklin.” When Benjamin Franklin created the fictional character, Silence Dogood, he achieved both of these things outlined in this quote. The Silence Dogood Letters were both something worth reading and worth writing about. They were a popular phenomenon when they were first written and they still prove to be an important part of our U.S. history to this day. Silence Dogood was first created so that Ben could get his writing in his brother’s newspaper, The New England Courant. Each letter—the first one printed on April 2, 1722—was about random events taking place in Silence Dogood’s life.
In her classes we have also read a variety of great novels with my favorite being The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. For our final exam of my sophomore year we were assigned to write an essay called “The Pitfalls of the American Dream” in which we compared the main protagonist of The Great Gatsby with the main protagonist of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (a play we read in class). To this day this assignment is one of my favorite portfolio pieces because it discusses my favorite book read in school and showcases the writing skills that Ms. Murphy helped me to
William G. Tapply is an American legal mystery writer best known for writing the Brady Coyne Mystery series. William was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, before his family moved to Lexington. He lived with his mother Muriel and his father H.G Tapply that used to write a weekly column for Field and Stream. He went to Lexington High School and in 1958 enrolled at Amherst College and then proceeded to Harvard from where he graduated with a Master’s in Education. Over the course of 25 years, the master has published more than 40 novels in mystery and fly-fishing one of his favorite pastime.
Of course, these two experiences have resulted in the masterpiece Flowers for Algernon. The idea for this story suddenly struck the writer while waiting for an elevated train to take him from Brooklyn to New York in 1945. In his memoir Daniel Keyes remembers, "I thought: My education is driving a wedge between me and the people I love. And then I wondered: 'What would happen if it were possible to increase a person's intelligence?'" Published in the mid-to-late century, this rough, uncoloured novel of perseverance, truth and humanity still has a strong impact on a present-day world, becoming engrossed in reading this intellectual bestseller over and over.
She won a poetry contest at the university and found her future husband who was a young aspiring literary critic. She used to write everyday and started having her short stories published in many magazines. ‘The Haunting of the Hill House was published in 1959 and is considered as one of the best novels of Shirley Jackson. It is regarded as “quintessential haunted house tale”. It has been finalized for National Book Award and is considered to be one of the best literary ghost stories of 20th century.
He uses what he knows in life to write something alluring. Lowell’s unique poetry exhibits key features of his past education, time in World War II, and characteristics of confessional poetry. Lowell’s writing is unique for his time. Although he was educated like many others, he was one of the best and he used that education to write in his own way. Lowell “studied Greek and Latin at St. Mark’s, a prep school, and at Harvard and Kenyon College, where he graduated with the highest honors” (Meyers 173).
Seamus Heaney was boarding at St. Columb’s College in Londonderry on a scholarship. Here he had a very good English teacher and began to love reading, absorbing diverse material, from comic books to great literature. While as Agha Shahid Ali studied in Burris School in Muncie, Indiana. The Burris School is affiliated to Ball State University where Ali's father was earning the first Doctorate ever granted by Ball State University as well as the first Doctorate in Education by a Kashmiri. From 1957 until 1961 Heaney studied at Queen’s University in Belfast.
The book Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario is a nonfiction book based on a real story told throughout 367 pages. The reason why I decided to read this book is that it was highly recommended by one of my former English teachers. I was extremely persuaded to read this book by her but I also personally believed that by reading this book I would gain a new understanding of life by really opening my mind to new experiences that other people go through. This journey begins in Honduras, a country in Central America, then continues into Mexico and finally in the United States where Enrique ends up living for the remaining of the story. The story definitely took place a couple decades ago when Enrique was younger.