A Doll’s House
A harmless favor. A hidden debt. A husband who loves the idea of Nora—until reality knocks at the door.
Classic Literature for Grades 9–12
Browse classic literature curated for grades 9–12 readers.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare's playful comedy explores how desire and imagination can make the world feel enchanted and absurd.
A Tale of Two Cities
With guillotines, secret plots, and crowded tribunals, the novel shows how justice and revenge clash during the French Revolution.
Antigone
A clash between public law and private conscience drives Sophocles' tragedy toward irreversible loss.
As You Like It
Shakespeare blends satire and romance in a comedy about reinvention away from courtly pressure.
Beowulf
A heroic tale of monsters and loyalty that also questions reputation, leadership, and what remains after a life of victories.
Black History Month Poetry Mini Unit
On Being Brought from Africa to America, Sympathy, We Wear the Mask, Lift Every Voice and Sing, If We Must Die, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, A Negro Love Song,…
Black History Month Speeches Mini Unit
To the Nations of the World, Ain’t I a Woman?, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?, An Address to the Slaves of the United States, The Atlanta Compromise,…
Carmilla
As a foundational vampire tale, the novella explores atmosphere, unreliable perception, and the tension between intimacy and danger.
Dracula
Epistolary structure and Victorian anxieties about science, outsiders, and sexuality make the novel a rich study of fear and modernity.
Frankenstein
Frame narrative, scientific ethics, and isolation drive a discussion about accountability, empathy, and what society owes to the outcast.
Great Expectations
Pip's changing fortunes reveal how money, class, and loyalty collide as he learns who shaped his future and why.
Gulliver's Travels
From Lilliput to the land of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver measures himself against new cultures and questions what civilization means.
Hamlet
A midnight apparition, a royal cover-up, and a prince pretending to break—until the performance turns deadly.
Hedda Gabler
A brilliant mind returns. Old flames reappear. And Hedda turns boredom into a dangerous game with no safe winners.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
A landmark slave narrative that foregrounds gender, vulnerability, and resistance within a system built on control.
Jane Eyre
Jane faces harsh schools, hidden truths, and temptation while refusing to abandon her self-respect.
Julius Caesar
Political ideals collide with ambition in Shakespeare's drama of assassination and aftermath.
King Lear
A family loyalty test turns into betrayal, exile, and a storm-soaked reckoning where love has to prove itself the hard way.
Macbeth
A victory becomes temptation, temptation becomes murder, and murder becomes a nightmare you can’t wash off.
Medea
Euripides explores betrayal, gender, and vengeance through one of drama's most unforgettable antiheroes.
Meditations
Short, direct reflections that help students evaluate claims about control, responsibility, and meaning—then apply them to modern pressure.
Metamorphoses
A fast-moving myth collection where characters change shape and fate, supporting analysis of theme, pattern, and how stories connect across a cycle.
Moby-Dick
A curious sailor signs onto the Pequod and joins a daring hunt for a legendary white whale across wild seas. Brave friends, eerie omens, and crashing waves mak…
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
A foundational American autobiography that links lived experience to a broader moral and political argument against slavery.
Oedipus Rex
A relentless search for truth becomes a devastating revelation in Sophocles' landmark tragedy.
Othello
A newlywed couple. A trusted friend. A slow poison of jealousy that feels “logical” right until it’s too late.
Pride and Prejudice
Set in Regency England, the novel weighs wealth, reputation, and honesty as Elizabeth decides whom to trust.
Pygmalion
A voice lesson becomes a social experiment, and the experiment creates someone who won’t fit back into the old life.
Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare's iconic tragedy blends romance, wit, and escalating conflict into one of literature's most famous endings.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
On winding riverbanks, Huck weighs friendship against prejudice and learns to trust his conscience over local rules.
The Aeneid
Aeneas journeys toward Italy under divine pressure, forced to choose between compassion and destiny as every decision has a public cost.
The Canterbury Tales
A lively set of tales that reveal medieval society through competing voices, making it ideal for analyzing perspective, tone, and satire.
The Divine Comedy
A guided journey through the afterlife that turns abstract ethics into vivid scenes, helping students analyze symbolism, argument, and moral consequence.
The Great Gatsby
Through Nick's eyes, we watch Gatsby chase a dream that shimmers just out of reach while the Jazz Age buzzes around them. Fast cars, fragile loyalties, and sec…
The Iliad
Set during the Trojan War, the story follows Achilles’ anger and its consequences, pushing students to track motive, consequence, and shifting loyalty.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Engagements pile up, names get swapped, and manners become weapons in a comedy where everyone wants the “right” story.
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
One of the best-known early Black autobiographies in Europe, influential in shaping abolitionist public opinion.
The King in Yellow
The collection blends gothic mood and early cosmic horror, offering a lens on fin-de-siècle anxiety, art, and mental collapse.
The Odyssey
Odysseus struggles to return home, testing loyalty, identity, and self-control as the gods and his own choices shape every setback.
The Phantom of the Opera
The novel blends romance and suspense while exploring empathy, appearance, and the costs of obsession.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Themes of art, ethics, and reputation invite students to debate whether aesthetic freedom can excuse moral decay.
The Scarlet Letter
The novel probes guilt, justice, and forgiveness as each character confronts the cost of judgment in a strict community.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The novella probes Victorian fears about hidden vice, reputation, and scientific overreach while inviting debate about the nature of the self.
The Tempest
Shakespeare's late play mixes wonder and reckoning as characters move from control toward reconciliation.
The Turn of the Screw
Students can unpack point of view, unreliable narration, and the era's anxieties about innocence and authority.
Twelve Years a Slave
A detailed eyewitness account of the slave system from the perspective of a person illegally enslaved after living free.
Up from Slavery
A major early-20th-century autobiography arguing for education and economic foundation as pathways to progress.
Wuthering Heights
The novel's framed narration exposes how passion without mercy devastates every corner of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.