The Great Gatsby is a novel by the American author
F. Scott Fitzgerald. First published on April 10, 1925, the story is set in New York City and Long Island during the summer of 1922.
The novel chronicles an era that Fitzgerald himself dubbed the "
Jazz Age." Following the shock and chaos of World War I, American society enjoyed unprecedented levels of prosperity during the 1920s as the economy soared. At the same time, Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment, made millionaires out of bootleggers and encouraged organized crime. Although Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized the riches and glamour of the age, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and lack of morality that went with it.
The Great Gatsby was not popular upon initial printing and sold fewer than 25,000 copies during the remaining fifteen years of Fitzgerald's life.
Although it was adapted into both a
Broadway play and a Hollywood film within a year of publication, it was largely forgotten during the Great Depression and World War II. After it was republished in 1945 and 1953, it quickly found a wide readership, and is now often regarded as the Great American Novel. It is now a standard text in high school and university courses on American literature in countries around the world.
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The Walrus and the Carpenter is a poem by
Lewis Carroll that appeared in his book
Through the Looking-Glass, published in December 1871. The Walrus and the Carpenter are the titular characters in the poem, which is recited by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. Walking upon a beach one "sunny" night, the Walrus and Carpenter come upon some oysters, four of whom they invite to join them-- however, to the disapproval of the eldest oyster, many more follow them. After walking along the beach, the two titular characters get hungry and eat all of the oysters. Afterward, the Walrus regrets his actions and cries, mostly because now there are no more oysters for him to eat.
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The Vengeance of the Statue. The novel concludes with: a traitor, a hero, one murder; two deaths, a war.
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Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) was an American journalist, poet, literary critic, lecturer and editor. Though a prolific poet whose works celebrated the common beauty of the natural world as well as his religious faith, Kilmer is remembered most for a poem entitled "Trees" (1913) which was published in the collection
Trees and Other Poems in 1914. While most of his works are unknown, a select few of his poems remain popular and are published frequently in anthologies. Several critics, both Kilmer's contemporaries and modern scholars, disparaged Kilmer's work as being too simple, overly sentimental, and that his style was far too traditional, even archaic.
At the time of his deployment to Europe during the first World War (1914-1918), Kilmer was considered the leading American Roman Catholic poet and lecturer of his generation, whom critics often compared to British contemporaries
G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.A sergeant in the 69th Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Kilmer was killed at the Second Battle of Marne in 1918 at the age of 31.
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Horne Fisher, electioneering for a country seat in Parliament is threatened by the poacher, Long Adam.
The Hole in the Wall. Horne Fisher is invited to an ice skating party he would rather not attend.
