Curated category
Love stories
- As You Like ItThe play As You Like It emerged from the creative ferment of late 1598 and early 1599. No quarto edition exists for this work, meaning its first printed…
- CinderellaThe Greek geographer Strabo recorded a tale about Rhodopis, a courtesan living in the colony of Naucratis in Egypt, sometime between 7 BC and AD 23.
- Romeo and JulietThe story of Romeo and Juliet did not begin in Shakespeare's mind. It emerged from a long tradition of tragic love stories stretching back to antiquity.
- The Sun Also RisesIn 1925, Paris hosted as many as 200,000 English-speaking expatriates seeking refuge from the United States. The Paris Tribune reported that year on an…
- Jane EyreCharlotte Brontë began writing Jane Eyre in Manchester during the summer of 1845, drawing directly from her own childhood trauma and family history.
- Troilus and CressidaIn the year 1602, William Shakespeare began writing a play that would confuse audiences for four centuries. The story draws from two distinct traditions that…
- Antony and CleopatraThe story of Antony and Cleopatra begins in 1579 with a translation by Sir Thomas North. This English version of Plutarch's Lives provided the raw material…
- Gone with the Wind (novel)Margaret Mitchell began writing Gone with the Wind in 1926 while recovering from a slow-healing injury sustained in an auto crash.
- The Taming of the ShrewThe Taming of the Shrew emerged from a foggy period between 1590 and 1592, when William Shakespeare first arrived in London.
- Titanic (1997 film)James Cameron stared into the dark Atlantic in 1985 and saw a ghost. He had spent years studying shipwrecks, but the Titanic felt like Mount Everest to him.
- The Two Gentlemen of VeronaShakespeare drew his plot from the Spanish prose romance The Seven Books of Diana by Jorge de Montemayor, published in 1559.