eNotes Literature Guides combine high-quality content from a variety of sources, including material developed exclusively for eNotes by our team of researchers and writers. Use the menu below for more information.
eNotes Series
The eNotes series includes in-depth guides to more than 1200 works of literature, covering novels, drama, poetry, short stories, and nonfiction classics. Material is selected from the Gale Group's acclaimed For Students series, as well as the popular MAXnotes collection published by Research and Education Association. eNotes also publishes its own original material to augment the guides. eNotes editors have organized the content in an easy-to-use format, ensuring that all guides can be viewed online, printed, or downloaded as PDFs.
The purpose of the series is to provide readers with a guide to understanding, enjoying, and studying works by giving them easy access to information about the work. The series is specifically designed to meet the curricular needs of high school and undergraduate college students and their teachers, as well as the interests of general readers and researchers considering specific works. While each volume contains entries on "classic" works frequently studied in classrooms, there are also entries containing hard-to-find information on contemporary works, including works by multicultural, international, and women writers.
The information covered in each entry includes an introduction to the work and the work's author; a summary to help readers unravel and understand the events in a work; descriptions of important characters, including explanation of a given character's role in the work as well as discussion about that character's relationship to other characters in the work; analysis of important themes in the work; and an explanation of important literary techniques and movements as they are demonstrated in the work.
quickNotes Series
The quickNotes series features condensed study guides to more than 2,000 works of literature, culled from two highly regarded works originally published by Beacham Press: The Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction and Literature For Young Adults. The series is designed to provide critical information on a wide range of works, in an easy-to-use, accessible format. The guides will appeal to a diverse audience in addition to students, such as teachers, librarians, parents, professors, and casual readers.
One purpose of the series is to provide information on works for which there is often very little critical material available. Generally, though not by editorial design, the length of the guide reflects the interest in the writer or the complexity of his/her work.
eNotes Contributors
Various scholars from around the world have contributed to websites published by eNotes. Below is information on some of the primary authors and editors of the site. For information on how to cite eNotes in your bibliography or works cited, please see our help page.
Roger Moore:
Roger Moore was educated at Rutger's University in
New Jersey and University of California at Berkeley. Over the last thirty years he has written hundreds of books, articles, monographs and educational aides on diverse
topics.
Jeff Kersh:
Jeff Kersh received his PhD in English from Oklahoma State University in 1994. Since then, he has taught English at all levels both full- and part-time and published poetry, fiction and nonfiction in a variety of print and online journals. He currently lives and works as a Technical Writer in Jackson, Mississippi, where he continues to write and publish in a broad range of genres.
J.R. Costa:
J.R. Costa was educated at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. Costa is completing a PhD at the Institute, with a concentration in Shakespeare on film.
Alan Watkinson:
Alan Watkinson is Head of the English Faculty at Scotch College, Melbourne, and has taught English since 1975. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of Melbourne.
Larry Hardesty:
Larry Hardesty studied philosophy at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He was an editor at both the Boston Book Review and MIT's Technology Review. To those two magazines, and to the Kirkus Reviews, he has contributed roughly 30 articles on fiction, film, philosophy, music, and emerging technology.
Peter Pick:
Peter Pick is a postgraduate English Literature student at Birmingham University in England. As an undergraduate he specialised in 16th and 17th Century Literature at the University of Sussex.
Charmaine Cordero:
Charmaine Cordero teaches English in Arcadia, California. She holds an MA in English Literature from California State University, Los Angeles, where she completed a thesis on marriage in Romeo and Juliet and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
Anna Renton-Green:
Anna Renton-Green holds an MA from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. She teaches English and Drama in New Zealand.