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Literature by Place

It's kind of crazy to what extent geography can inform an author's work. Jack London spent most of his life at sea, dog-sledding across Alaska, boxing and generally being an adventurous guy who would put today's REI crowd to shame. Would he have penned some of the greatest American novels otherwise? especially ones concerned primarily with man battling the elements for survival in both a mental and physical sense? Very probably not, which explains why Oscar Wilde didn't write about wolves and crazy ship captains.

No, Oscar Wilde wrote primarily about fops and society people parrying witticisms incessantly. That's not to say his work has no place in a serious consideration of literature—au contraire, The Picture of Dorian Grey is one of the finest novels written in English. It's just more evidence that if you're an author who lives in the Canadian mountains or the clubs of London, your writing will reflect that.

Physical terrain isn't the only consideration. Sartre wrote about people lolling about with no real sense of purpose except to drink wine and smoke cigarettes and look languorous because he lived in France in the 1940s. Friedrich Nietzsche had immense mustaches and espoused a form of nihilism because he was German. The Russians wrote impossibly long novels because they lived in Russia. And Chinua Achebe was almost entirely influenced by his African upbringing.

That's not to say no one can write well about a context they haven't experienced firsthand. I'm pretty sure Robert Heinlein never visited Mars, and even if he did it wasn't as his books describe; the same goes for Bradbury. And no, Roald Dahl was never lost in a delightfully (though at times, terrifyingly) absurd chocolate factory. Yet even with these examples, the authors conveyed essentially the attitudes of the countries they came from—Heinlein and Bradbury from the U.S., Dahl from the U.K.

Our Literature by Place subcategories are admittedly Anglo-centric. North American literature features, well, American literature, and you can be pretty sure British literature reflects the same system; everything else goes in world literature. We have plenty of non-American or -British literature, we just don't have much from any one place besides those two. At any rate, we hope these categories are helpful, and if they guide you toward one book you're looking for (or maybe one you didn't even know existed), they've done their job.

Review by C. Hollis Crossman
C. Hollis Crossman used to be a child. Now he's a husband and father who loves church, good food, and weird stuff. He might be a mythical creature, but he's definitely not a centaur. Read more of his reviews here.
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Active Filters: Poetry, 9th grade (Ages 14-15)
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
from Sweetwater Press
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry
by Tony Barnstone & Chou Ping, eds.
from Anchor Books
for 9th-12th grade
in Poetry Anthologies (Location: POET-ANTH)
$17.00 $9.00 (1 in stock)
Brownings: Letters and Poetry
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Browning
from International Collectors Library
for 9th-12th grade
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
Canterbury Tales
Penguin Classics
by Geoffrey Chaucer (edited by Nevill Coghill)
from Penguin Classics
Medieval Poetry for 8th-12th grade
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$11.00
Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by David Wright
from Oxford University
for 9th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$8.95
Charge of the Light Brigade & Other Poems
Dover Thrift Editions
by Alfred Tennyson
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$4.00
Chicago Poems
by Carl Sandburg
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$1.50 (1 in stock)
Children of Hurin
by J. R. R. Tolkien
from Houghton Mifflin
Fantasy for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$16.99
Collected Poems of Robert Service
by Robert W. Service
1966 Edition from Dodd, Mead & Co.
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$10.00 (1 in stock)
Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe
from Modern Library
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$25.00
Complete English Poems of John Donne
Penguin Classics
by John Donne
from Penguin Classics
Lyrical Poetry for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$21.00
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
by Emily Dickinson
from Little, Brown & Company
for 7th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$23.99
Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
from Penguin Classics
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
Complete Sonnets
Dover Thrift Editions
by William Shakespeare
from Dover Publications
Lyrical Poetry for 9th-Adult
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)
$4.50 $2.00 (2 in stock)
Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe
from Barnes & Noble
for 8th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
Early Moon
by Carl Sandburg, illustrated by James Daugherty
from Harcourt
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
Elfin Knight
by Edmund Spenser & Toby Sumpter
from Canon Press
for 9th-Adult
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)
$20.00
Emily Dickinson On Love
by Emily Dickinson
from Barnes & Noble
for 7th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
English Victorian Poetry
by Paul Negri, ed.
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry Anthologies (Location: POET-ANTH)
$6.00
Favorite Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$3.00
Four Quartets
by T. S. Eliot
from Harcourt
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$9.99
Idylls of the King
by Alfred Tennyson
from Penguin Classics
Epic Poetry for 8th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
Illustrated Library of World Poetry
by William Cullen Bryant, editor
from Gramercy Books
Poetry for 9th-Adult
in Poetry Anthologies (Location: POET-ANTH)
Lady of the Lake
by Sir Walter Scott, edited with notes by William J. Rolfe
from Houghton Mifflin
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Lady of the Lake
The Students' Series of English Classics
by Sir Walter Scott, edited with introduction and notes by James Arthur Tufts
from Leach, Shewell & Sanborn
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Learning Language Arts Through Literature - British Poetry Anthology
from Common Sense Press
for 9th-12th grade
in Clearance: English & Language Arts (Location: ZCLE-LAN)
$8.00 $6.00 (1 in stock)
Major Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
from Oxford University
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$15.95
Major Works of William Wordsworth
by William Wordsworth
from Oxford University
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$18.95
Narrative Poems
by C. S. Lewis
Reprint from HarperOne
Narrative Poetry for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$14.99
Ogden Nash Set - 4 Volumes
by Ogden Nash
from Little, Brown & Company
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
Poems
by C. S. Lewis
Reissue from HarperOne
Lyrical Poetry for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$13.99
Road Not Taken & Other Poems
Dover Thrift Editions
by Robert Frost
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$3.00
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
by Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward FitzGerald and illustrated by J. Watson Davis
from A. L. Burt Company
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
Selected Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Reprint from Penguin Classics
for 8th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
$17.00
Shakespeare's Sonnets
by William Shakespeare
from Barnes & Noble
Lyrical Poetry for 9th-Adult
in Renaissance & Reformation Literature (Location: LIT3-REN)
Shelley's Poetry and Prose
Norton Critical Edition
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
2nd edition from W. W. Norton and Co.
for 9th-Adult
in 19th Century Literature (Location: LIT6-19)
$16.50 (1 in stock)
Shropshire Lad
by A. E. Housman
from Franklin Watts
for 7th-12th grade
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$12.00 (1 in stock)
Shropshire Lad
The Living Library
by A. E. Housman, Illustrated by Jeanne Edwards
from World Publishing Company
for 7th-12th grade
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$5.00 (1 in stock)
Singer
by Calvin Miller
from InterVarsity Press
Allegorical Fantasy for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight / Pearl / Sir Orfeo
by Anonymous, J. R. R. Tolkien (Translator)
from Ballantine Books
Medieval Fairy Tale/Poetry for 8th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$8.99
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight / Pearl / Sir Orfeo
by Anonymous, J. R. R. Tolkien (Translator)
from Mariner Books
Medieval Fairy Tale/Poetry for 8th-Adult
in Medieval Literature (Location: LIT2-MED)
$16.99
Song
by Calvin Miller
from InterVarsity Press
for 9th-Adult
in 20th & 21st Century Literature (Location: LIT7-20)
$1.50 (1 in stock)
Song of Hiawatha and Other Poems
Reader's Digest World's Best Reading
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, illustrated by Frederic Remington, Howard Chandler Christy, et al
from Reader's Digest
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry (Location: POET-GEN)
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe, illustrated by Russell Hoban, afterword by Clifton Fadiman
4th printing, 1967 from Macmillan
for 8th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$14.00 (1 in stock)
Translations from the Chinese
by Arthur Waley
from Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
for 6th-Adult
in Vintage Poetry (Location: VIN-POET)
$8.00 (1 in stock)
Tristram
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
from Macmillan
for 9th-Adult
in Vintage Fiction & Literature (Location: VIN-FIC)
$6.00 (1 in stock)
World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg and Others
by Various Authors
from Dover Publications
for 9th-Adult
in Poetry Anthologies (Location: POET-ANTH)
$3.50
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