Showing results for "An Encounter" in Art & Literature

Jane Austen is famous for such books as Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. Now learn about the author’s journey through a life spent making up stories that touched the lives of millions.

When she arrived in the New World at 18, Anne Bradstreet was a reluctant passenger: Her old, comfortable lifestyle in England was quickly dashed against the rocks of the Massachusetts Bay. While the wilderness of America and the drama of establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony at times overwhelmed her, she always took refuge in the belief that it was God’s plan. Anne respected the Puritan teachings and followed them her entire life, always searching for God’s hand in everything around her.

The author of The Pilgrim's Progress, one of the most influential books in English literature, had little formal education. Born in 1628, the son of a tinker, John Bunyan was expected to follow in his father's footsteps. Bunyan experienced his first sorrow in adolescence, when both his mother and sister died. It wasn't his last. He was jailed twice for preaching the Gospel. Yet amidst repeated imprisonments, civil war, and violent persecution, Bunyan crafted The Pilgrim's Progress, a testament unlike any other to the triumph of the human spirit.

In his twenties, Fydor Dostoevsky, son of a Moscow doctor, graduate of a military academy, and rising star of Russian literature, found himself standing in front of a firing squad, accused of subversive activities against the Russian Tsar. Then the drums rolled, signaling that instead he was to be exiled to the living death of Siberia. Siberia was so cold the mercury froze in the thermometer. In prison, Dostoevsky was surrounded by murderers, thieves, parricides, and brigands who drank heavily, quarreled incessantly, and fought with horrible brutality.