Every work,
annotated.
You get the whole passage, in its own words, plus a note in the margin that explains what it's doing. Nothing is abridged.
See which of these became films →To be, or not to be
William Shakespeare · Hamlet · 1601
The most famous think-out-loud in the language, plainly translated.
Macbeth — The Dagger Soliloquy
William Shakespeare · 1606
A man argues with a dagger he knows perfectly well isn't there.
The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe · 1845
The poem engineered, beat by beat, to get inside your head.
La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats · 1819
A ballad with one question, one answer, and no cure.
Moby-Dick — Opening
Herman Melville · 1851
Three words that turn a narrator into an invitation.
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 1866
A student commits a murder to prove a theory, then has to live inside it.
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad · 1899
A river journey inward, told by a man on a boat on the Thames.
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath · 1963
A brilliant student watches her own mind become the weather.
Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys · 1966
The first Mrs Rochester gets to tell it herself.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe · 1839
A house, a brother, a sister, and a crack down the middle of everything.
The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe · 1843
A murderer explains, calmly, why he is not mad.
The Black Cat
Edgar Allan Poe · 1843
A man who loves animals becomes the thing he most fears.
The Call of Cthulhu
H. P. Lovecraft · 1928
A case file assembled from notes, clippings and a sailor's account.
The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 1892
A woman is prescribed rest in a room and starts reading the wallpaper.
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson · 1959
Four people stay in a house that is not sane, and one of them is not sure she is.