First published in 1924, “A Passage to India” is E. M. Forster’s classic tale of prejudice and misunderstanding in colonial India. Widely considered to be one of the best novels of 20th century English literature, “A Passage to India” was based on Forster’s own experiences in India while it was under the rule of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement was gaining in popularity. The novel centers around the tensions between the nativ ...
First published in 1924, “The Boxcar Children” is the beloved children’s classic by American grade school teacher and author, Gertrude Chandler Warner. It is the story of four orphaned siblings, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny, and their adventures living in an abandoned boxcar in the forest. The children are having fun while living in the boxcar at first, though several adults in the community are aware of their situation and are keeping an ey ...
First published in 1930, “Not Without Laughter” is the debut novel by Langston Hughes and a deeply personal, semi-autobiographical tale of an African-American family in rural Kansas. Langston Hughes, born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, spent much of his youth in Lawrence, Kansas and it is here that he set his first novel. “Not Without Laughter” tells the story of young Sandy Rogers as he grows from a boy to a young man and focuses on his “awakenin ...
Originally written in Russian in 1920 and first published in English in 1924, “We” is the dystopian novel by Russian science-fiction writer Yevgeny Zamyatin. “We” takes place hundreds of years into a bleak future, where the citizens live under the total control and surveillance of a police state, called One State. The country is made almost entirely out of glass, which makes it easier for the government to watch every move of its citizens. One S ...
Kate Douglas Wiggin was an important reformer of children’s education at the turn of the century. During a period when children’s use in society was often little more than for cheap labor, Kate Douglas Wiggin was dedicated to the betterment of youth. She was the first person to found a free kindergarten school in San Francisco in 1878. Her passion for children’s rights carried over to her successful career as an author of children’s books. In he ...
“The Blacker the Berry” is the provocative and illuminating 1929 novel by Harlem Renaissance author Wallace Thurman. The novel follows the life of Emma Lou Morgan, a young black woman with dark skin. She is born and raised by her single mother in the predominantly white community of Boise, Idaho. She often feels like an outsider, even among her family, as they are lighter skinned than she, and believes that her dark skin will keep her from marry ...
First published in 1923, “Emily of New Moon” is the first of three novels in a series by Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of famous “Anne of Green Gables” books. The story centers around the life of Emily Starr, a young orphan who is raised by relatives after her father dies of tuberculosis. Montgomery based the character of Emily on her own true-life story and often remarked that her personality and that of the Canadian orphan were very similar ...
First Published in 1903, Erskine Childers’ “The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service”, is one of the earliest examples of an espionage novel and was immensely influential in the creation of this popular genre. Childers led an interesting and adventurous life, becoming an amateur sailor as a young man before enlisting in the military and serving in the Boer War and eventually the First World War. In “The Riddle of the Sands”, a grippin ...
Catharine Maria Sedgwick was a prominent American novelist of the 19th century whose work did a great deal to bring women’s issues into the public sphere. Her progressive narratives, set against the Puritanical morally conservative values of her time, advocated for greater female equality. Set in 17th century New England, “Hope Leslie” tells the tale of a young New England Puritan woman and her dynamic experiences in recently founded America. Th ...
