The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is one of those books that we all know even if we have never read it. With his first work of fiction, Daniel Defoe–a businessman turned poet, journalist, and political propagandist–created a character who very quickly went on to have a life that went well beyond the pages of the book that first appeared, without build-up, fanfare, or even the author’s name on the title page, in April 1719. Robinson Crusoe was an immediate bestseller; the bookseller went through several editions in the first year alone. By August, Defoe had produced a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a work that he wrote quickly in part to head off the possibility that someone else might beat him to it. Over the last three hundred years, the story of a person isolated on a deserted island or something like it, has been used by dozens, maybe hundreds of writers, who have made it a genre of its own, the “Robinsoniad,” a genre that includes satirical parodies like Gulliver’s Travels, children’s books like The Swiss Family Robinson, Bugs Bunny cartoons, television situation comedies like Gilligan’s Island, and science fiction works like The Martian. Robinson Crusoe, the man and the book in which he first appeared, has become one of the foundational myths of the modern world.The story of one man’s survival has become so well known in all of these instances that it can be difficult to see through the mythology to analyze Defoe’s original book and to imagine what its first readers might have noticed and found so striking. It is important to recognize, for example, that the book is told in the first person, by a narrator who never lets on that this is a work of fiction. Defoe’s name, as noted above, did not appear on the title page of the first edition (although it quickly became clear to those in the know that he was the author), or even in any of the many editions issued in his lifetime. Although the book is famous for the many years that Crusoe spends on the island, it takes a while for him to get there, and his experiences both before and after his time there are worth paying attention to for the way that they frame the central experience. Defoe’s prose is sometimes clunky-he has a tendency to shape sentences and paragraphs that would never pass muster with a modern copyeditor–but it is also capable of great beauty and insight, and rewards careful attention.

ePub version of text The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet by William Shakepeare, 1564-1616.

The diary that Samuel Pepys (pronounced “peeps,” 1633-1703) kept from 1660 to 1669 is the most famous diary written in the English language. In part this is because Pepys was writing at a fascinating moment, and, living in London and working for the government, he was in a good position to see important historical events take place in real time. Pepys began writing his diary just weeks before the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and he was even on the ship that was sent to bring Charles II back to England. He was an eyewitness to Charles’s coronation, to the Great Fire of London in 1666, to a terrible occurrence of the plague, and to the wars that England fought with the Dutch in that decade, wars that turned out to be crucially important to establishing England as the dominant naval power in the north Atlantic. And as an important figure in the administration of the Royal Navy, he became a participant as well in the machinery of the state.

A brief history of the life of William Shakespeare given by the experts at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Includes sections on his early life, his successful years in London, and his enduring legacy.

In this activity, you and your students will explore Elizabethan stage practices as the rustic yet enthusiastic amateur actors from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. While it's not necessary to teach Shakespeare's biography while studying his plays, sometimes opportunities to explore his world through his own eyes present themselves in his text. Students' new insights into the text will provide them with a deeper appreciation for Shakespeare’s world. This activity will take one or two class periods.

Benjamin Franklin was sixteen years old and working as an apprentice in the Boston print shop of his older brother James when, in April 1722, he began writing a series of essays to be published in the New-England Courant under the pseudonym of “Silence Dogood.” In his Autobiography, Benjamin remembered slipping these essays, written in disguised handwriting, under the door of the Courant, which James was publishing; he assumed (probably correctly) that James would refuse to print an essay from him if he simply asked or submitted it under his own name. James published the essays, which became very popular among the newspaper’s readers. Benjamin kept his authorship of the series a secret, even from his brother, until after he finished writing them in October 1722, at which point James printed an advertisement asking for “Silence Dogood” to come forth. Benjamin confessed that he was the author, which seems to have annoyed his older brother. It was not too long after that that Benjamin left his brother’s shop–breaking his apprenticeship–and moved to Philadelphia.

Edwards originally gave this as a sermon in July 1741, and it was printed later that year. This text is derived from from The Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, ed H. Norman Gardiner (New York: Macmillan, 1904) digitized by Project Gutenberg.

The Spectator is the most famous work of journalism of the eighteenth century in English. It set the pattern for a kind of essay writing that persists to the present day. Comparatively short but thorough essays on topics of interest to middle-class readers (politics, fashion, the arts), written in a clear and straightforward style without partisanship or professional jargon: this is a mode that is still standard in print and online journalism. A collaboration between Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator has in our time been credited with being essential to the formation of what the sociologist Jürgen Habermas has influentially dubbed “the bourgeois public sphere.” Habermas describes the bourgeois public sphere as being made up of private individuals coming together to constitute a public, in this case a public that was not affiliated with the government or the church, but an independent body that could discuss important issues on its own. Gathered together in coffee houses, over tea tables, or simply in their studies, readers of The Spectator were among the first to have a print publication that became a common frame of reference for middle-class English-speaking people; it set an agenda and a way of thinking about society and the arts that seemed derived, not from the aristocracy or the church, but from the shared world of the readers themselves.

This anthology presents a superb selection of the finest Mexican short stories ever written, and offers a glimpse into a diverse and fascinating culture. Authors include Juan Rulfo, Octavio Paz, Rosario Castellanos, and Carlos Fuentes. The Big Read Reader's Guide deepens your exploration with interviews, booklists, timelines, and historical information. We hope this guide and syllabus allow you to have fun with your students while introducing them to the work of the work of the great Mexican authors included in this anthology.

The item "A host of heroes - April Gudenrath" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "An anti-hero of one's own - Tim Adams" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "A poetic experiment: Walt Whitman, interpreted by three animators - Justin Moore" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "Does "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" have a hidden message? - David B. Parker" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "Everything you need to know to read "Frankenstein" - Iseult Gillespie" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "Everything you need to know to read Homer's "Odyssey" - Jill Dash" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "How did Dracula become the world's most famous vampire? - Stanley Stepanic" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "How fiction can change reality - Jessica Wise" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "How science fiction can help predict the future - Roey Tzezana" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "How to recognize a dystopia - Alex Gendler" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.

The item "Insults by Shakespeare" is a resources available in the Reading Between the Lines topic of the TED Eduation. series in the NCLOR. The video may include additional resources available from TED Education.