Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested.
(Francis Bacon)

Rogier van der Weyden, 
Portrait of a Man Holding a Book, before 1437

Table of Contents

All summaries, commentaries, and articles linked on this page have been written and/or prepared by Michael McGoodwin unless otherwise noted.  Where a line item refers to a single specific work, I have listed it under the author of that work—otherwise, especially if the summary deals with more than one author's books, I have given my name as the author of the article about the subject.  The year appearing in parentheses after the title is the approximate year of the subject work's composition or publication, or (when I am listed as the author) the year I wrote the article.

Please feel free to make use of these summaries as you please, but kindly acknowledge their source if you do use them.  Many of the earlier summaries here were originally prepared simply as a study aid and not with an eye on publication.  Some summaries have quotations and paraphrases extracted from copyrighted works, which I sincerely hope do not exceed fair use limits, but they may not always be properly enclosed in quotation marks.  You should therefore exercise caution when including text verbatim from any of these articles without checking and acknowledging the original source.  On most of these subjects, I am only an interested amateur, and make no personal claims regarding scholarly accuracy or originality of thought.

Ancient and Medieval Writings

William Shakespeare (writings dated c. 1588  - 1613)

All of these Shakespeare works have been summarized by me using The Complete Works of Shakespeare Updated Fourth Ed., Longman Addison-Wesley, edited by David Bevington, 1997.  Quotations are for the most part taken from that work, as are paraphrases of his commentary.  This is an outstanding book, with a highly scholarly introduction and excellent detailed annotations throughout, which are invaluable for making the meaning of Shakespeare as clear as possible. Spellings have been modernized and Americanized, and the whole approach is designed to demystify and make Shakespeare comprehensible, not always an easy task.  I highly recommend this particular compilation of the Shakespeare works.  For all summaries, I have usually provided (1) a few initial overall impressions, (2) some additional comments extracted from Bevington, plus (3) historical notes as appropriate, and then (4) a scene by scene summary, stating the locale at the start of each scene when it has changed.

Post-Medieval English-Language Fiction, Plays, and Misc. Literature

Post-Medieval Non-English Language Fiction, Plays, and Misc. Literature

History and Biography

Medicine

Science, Mathematics, and Other Nonfiction Works

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Created by Michael McGoodwin
Last update to this page: 16 March 2023