Portal:Literature
Introduction
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...)
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Lad, A Dog is a 1919 American novel written by Albert Payson Terhune and published by E. P. Dutton. Composed of twelve short stories first published in magazines, the novel is based on the life of Terhune's real-life rough collie, Lad. Born in 1902, the real-life Lad was an unregistered collie of unknown lineage originally owned by Terhune's father. Lad's death in 1918 was mourned by many of the story's fans, particularly children.
Through the stories of Lad's adventures, Terhune expresses his views on parenting, obtaining perfect obedience without force, and the nature and rights of the "well-bred". Terhune began writing the stories in 1915 at the suggestion of his Red Book Magazine editor. They gained in popularity and, as Terhune was under contractual obligation to submit something to Doubleday-Page, he collected them into novel form. After Doubleday rejected the novel, he solicited other publishers until it was picked up by Dutton. After a slow start, the novel became a best seller in the adult fiction and children's fiction markets, having been repositioned as a young adult novel by Grosset and Dunlap in the 1960s and 1970s. Selling over one million copies, it is Terhune's best-selling work and the one that propelled him to fame.
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“ | Away with your fictions of flimsy romance, Those tissues of falsehood which Folly has wove; Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance, Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love. |
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— Lord Byron, "The First Kiss of Love" |
More Did you know
- ... that Thio Tjin Boen's novel Tjerita Oeij Se, with a man who becomes rich after finding a kite made of paper money, has been read as a condemnation of interethnic marriage?
- ... that Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes is the first known children's book published in America?
- ... that Hella Haasse submitted her debut novel Oeroeg under the pseudonym Soeka toelis ("Like to write")?
- ... that Russian-born Yiddish playwright Peretz Hirshbein tried his hand at farming, both in the Catskills and in Argentina?
- ... that the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel The 34th Rule was intended to be an allegory for the Japanese American internment during the Second World War?
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that John Seigenthaler hosted a literary interview program which ran for 42 years on Nashville Public Television?
- ... that The Tale of Genji's Kaoru Genji has been called literature's first antihero?
- ... that Alexandre Dumas's travel book Le Corricolo, published in 1843, contains one of the earliest literary accounts of Neapolitan pizza?
- ... that Al-Wishah fi Fawa'id al-Nikah, a 15th-century Islamic sex manual by Egyptian writer Al-Suyuti, was based on both traditional hadith literature and material influenced by Indian erotology?
- ... that there is a Gambian literature even though it has been argued that there is "minimal basis" for its existence?
- ... that Hammersmith by Gustav Holst was acclaimed by Frederick Fennell for having "some of the most treacherous stretches of music making" in band literature?
Today in literature
- 1560 - Joachim Du Bellay, French poet died
- 1648 - Elkanah Settle, English writer born
- 1704 - Soame Jenyns, English writer born
- 1714 - Kristijonas Donelaitis, Lithuanian poet born
- 1767 - Maria Edgeworth, Anglo-Irish novelist born
- 1818 - Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus is published.
- 1873 - Mariano Azuela, Mexican novelist born
- 1879 - E. M. Forster, English novelist born
- 1919 - J. D. Salinger, American novelist born
- 1928 - Ernest Tidyman, American writer born
- 1933 - Joe Orton, English writer born
- 1937 - Adam Wiśniewski-Snerg, Polish author born
- 1951 - Ashfaq Hussain, Urdu poet born
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