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Category: Poetry and Literature

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Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn: Controversy at the Heart of a Classic

Posted by: Cheryl Lederle

Despite the controversies, Huckleberry Finn has remained a staple in high school literature study because teachers seek to engage students with texts that provoke discussion and questions. Primary sources from the Library of Congress can help deepen students' thinking around the issues central to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and other literary works.

One woman watches as another examines with a magnifying glass an ornate, decorative image on a printed page

Soldiers’ Poems of World War I in Newspapers: Personal Responses in Public Media

Posted by: Stephen Wesson

How can you share your response to a major world event? In the 19th and early 20th centuries, you might have put your thoughts down in a poem and sent it to a newspaper. The 1918 entry of the United States into World War I triggered an especially dramatic outpouring of these personal responses in verse.