Pillar

Reader's Companion

Period guides, author biographies, genre primers. Reference material that makes the per-work analyses more useful. Sample pieces include a short guide to the Victorian novel, an overview of modernism through twelve writers, and an essay on reading Shakespeare in the twenty-first century.

What is published already

While the Reader's Companion pieces are being written, the following pillars already have material live on the site:

• Essay Craft — practical guidance on writing analytical essays. The opening pieces cover thesis construction, integrating evidence, and the structural moves of close reading.
• Work Guides — close readings of individual literary works, organized at /category/{work}/. Browse Kate Chopin's short stories, A Doll's House, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and other assigned-reading staples.
• Free tools — including a working AI detector demo that gives students a sense of what authenticity detectors look at.
• About the site — what we publish, how we frame academic integrity, and why this archive exists.

When the Reader's Companion pieces will land

Each piece in this pillar is being written by editors with real subject-matter familiarity, not generated en masse. We publish in priority order based on what students are most often assigned. If you would like to be notified when a specific piece publishes, the contact page has the editorial team's address.