POETRY

'My own business bores me to death; I prefer other people's,' Oscar Wilde once said. Read on for more about this master wit, poet, and playwright.

The elusive Emily Brontë left precious few handwritten artifacts behind. One could fetch about $1.5 million.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the so-called Black national anthem, was written by 20th-century novelist/poet/songwriter James Weldon Johnson as a rallying cry for perseverance and social justice.

Geoffrey Chaucer—known as the "father of English literature"—has written many texts, but none loom as large as 'The Canterbury Tales.'

The Library of Congress is home to the largest collection of Walt Whitman manuscripts on Earth, and it needs your help transcribing and reviewing them.

Valentine cards are a perfect way for secret admirers to express their love—they’re also perfect for doing the opposite.

The Romantic poets' verse was beautiful and inspired—and so were their insults, though not in the same way.

Read about Emily Dickinson, from her famous poems about love, hope, and death, to her legacy at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst.

Thanks to a computer algorithm, we know something new about the mysterious author of 'Beowulf:' It was likely just one person.

Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow went on a crime spree during the Great Depression. They still found time to compose poetry.

Dylan's personal copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" is one of the rare items on display. In it, he wrote notes and drew doodles.

“I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go,” is just one of Langston Hughes's most memorable quotes.