Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright, author and poet who lived during the second half of the 19th century, challenged the prevailing notions of Victorian society that believed art and literature should be didactic. A proponent of the Aesthetic and Decadent movements, he believed in “art for art’s sake…

Arguably one of the most well-recognized first lines in English literature, Jane Austen’s opening to Pride and Prejudice tells the astute reader what to expect from her novel. Rather than a straightforward romance, or a sentimental novel of the late eighteenth century, Pride and Prejudice, like the rest of Austen’s novels, is one of subtle, playful and tongue-in-cheek critique and commentary on her social world, that of the British landed gentry…

Written between 1387 and 1400 by Geoffrey Chaucer, an English royal court poet, The Canterbury Tales legitimized the literary use of Middle English, since most texts at the time were written in Latin. Chaucer is considered the father of English literature…

The Rosenbach’s copy of Ignatius Sancho’s Letters is a remarkable artifact of resilience in the face of suffering, a testament to the horrors of human trafficking, and an important primary source documenting the global history of enslavement in the 1700s…

The First Folio, printed in 1623, represented the first time that nearly all of William Shakespeare’s plays were published together. It is also the first time that nearly half of his plays appeared in print, and the first time that the plays were sorted into the categories of “comedy,” “tragedy,” and “history” that are still used today…

The Rosenbach’s Robert Burns collection documents the poet’s many achievements, including his authorship of some of the most romantic poems and song lyrics ever written. However, Burns had a complex relationship with women that has called some to question his status as Scotland’s national poet…