On title page: With her letters (18871901) and a supplementary account of her education, including passages from the reports and letters of her teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan by John Albert Macy.

"Here, I thought, was one of the most melodramatic and gorgeous bits of Americana that had ever come my way. It was not only the theater - it was the theater plus the glamour of the wandering drifting life, the drama of the river towns, the mystery and terror of the Mississippi itself... I spent a year hunting down every available scrap of show-boat material; reading, interviewing, taking notes and making outlines." Inspired by an offhand comment...

Antony and Cleopatra (1607) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. Inspired by Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives-a series of biographies on influential figures of the ancient world-Shakespeare wrote Antony and Cleopatra sometime between 1599 and 1601. Often considered a sequel of sorts to his earlier play Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra has served as source material for countless film and television adaptations. "Let Rome in Tiber melt,...

The Metamorphoses of Ovid (8 AD) is an epic poem by Ovid. Published the same year, the poet was, sent into exile for the rest of his life, the Metamorphoses are the crowning achievement of the first major poet of the Roman empire. Written in dactylic hexameter, the meter of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and of Virgil's Aeneid, Ovid's work is an epic poem of transformations, of shape-shifting matter and beings bound to the power of love. Taking as its...

Autobiography of Mark Twain (1907) is a collection of autobiographical writings by American humorist Mark Twain. Dictated toward the end of his life, the Autobiography of Mark Twain is a series of brief reflections on 74 years of fame, hard work, and adventure by an icon of American literature. Originally serialized in the North American Review, the United States' oldest literary magazine, the Autobiography of Mark Twain has gone through countless...

In 1905, after suffering a relapse and spending a few months at The Hartford Retreat, Clifford Whittingham Beers elected to write a book about his experiences living with mental illness and being subject to cruel treatment and physical abuse while being institutionalized. Titled, A Mind That Found Itself, the 1908 autobiography told the story of a young man who had suffered a life full of personal tragedy, leading to feelings of intense anxiety, paranoia...

American Indian Stories (1921) is a collection of stories and essays from Yankton Dakota writer Zitkála-Šá. Published while Zitkála-Šá was at the height of her career as an artist and activist, American Indian Stories collects the author's personal experiences, the legends and stories passed down through Sioux oral tradition, and her own reflections on the mistreatment of American Indians nationwide. In "My Mother," Zitkála-Šá remembers...

First performed in 1882, "Ghosts" is the controversial and tragic play by the famed Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It is the story of Helen Alving, a wealthy widow who was unhappily married to her unfaithful husband. Helen has tried to shelter her son, Oswald, from the corrupting influence of his father's immoral behavior and has sent him away only to discover that he is suffering from syphilis inherited from his father. Oswald has also unfortunately...

With a mix of both respectable and immoral advice, The Prince is a frank analysis on political power. Separated into four sections, The Prince is both a guide to obtain power and an explanation on the aspects that affect it. The first section discusses the types of principalities. According to Machiavelli, there are four different types-hereditary, mixed, new and ecclesiastical. While defining each type, Machiavelli also discusses the implications...

King Lear is a prosperous but older man who plans to distribute his wealth among his three daughters in accordance to their declarations of love. Two shower him with compliments while the other is unable to participate in a false display of affection. King Lear decides to step down from the throne and gift his daughters with the spoils of his kingdom. As a test, the size of their inheritance will correlate with how well they flatter him. The two...