This book about writing and literature contains a comprehensive anthology of works - stories, plays, and poems - designed to help the reader appreciate the works in the context of writing about them. Included in this collection are numerous example essays and discussions of important literary subjects such as character, setting, and symbolism, guaranteed to ensure that the reader comes away with an understanding of how to read fine literature and critique it. This book covers such literary topics as character, point of view, plot and structure, and setting, and emphasizes the technique of close-reading, allowing the user to fully appreciate and understand the collection of works presented. The selections include stories by Bierce, Chopin, Hardy, Hawthorne, Mansfield, Poe, de Maupassant, and O'Connor; poems by Arnold, Blake, Coleridge, Frost, Hardy, Herbert, Hughes, Keats, Layton, Lowell, Owen, Randall, Shakespeare, Lord Tennyson, Yeats, Whitman, and Wordsworth; and plays by Chekhov and Glaspell. For any reader interested in learning more about the way that reading fine literature and writing fine essays are connected. Read Less