Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel Invisible Man tells the story of an unnamed narrator who is not physically "invisible," but instead is someone who people refuse to see. Ellison's book was an allegory for the status of African Americans in American society at the time. The book also dealt with Marxist politics, cultural norms, and issues of black nationalism through its narrator becoming invisible.

Robert Penn Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with All the King's Men, a roman à clef about the political career of assassinated Louisiana politician Huey P. Long. The novel was made into a successful film, and gained Warren a notable amount of literary success. Warren is the only person to win a Pulitzer for Fiction and Poetry, having won the latter prize in both 1958 and 1979.

Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 novel Lolita caused almost instant controversy, as its subject matter was about a college professor in his late thirties who was obsessed with a twelve-year-old girl. The book's narrative format, featuring an unreliable narrator, proved engrossing to readers and critics. As well, Nabokov's use of language and plumbing of psychological problems made the book considered one of the best of the century.

William Faulkner is well known both for exploring the culture and habits of the inhabitants of his native Mississippi and using inventive and creative forms of narrative and literary structure. Both of these elements are exhibited in his book As I Lay Dying. Covering the attempt of the dysfunctional Bundren family to bury their mother Addie in her family cemetery, the chapters take the point of view of different members of the family.

Ray Bradbury was well known as a general science fiction author in the early 1950s who covered topics like space flight and aliens. His 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 was a much more obviously allegorical tale about the social and political situation in 1950s America. The book's discussion of banning and burning books was an intentional effort by Bradbury to address the Red Scare, censorship, and political banishment.

J.R.R. Tolkien was an Oxford University professor who began telling his children stories about a fictional time and place as bedtime stories. Eventually, Tolkien molded and reshaped these stories into the novels The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. Tolkien's books became classics of the fantasy genre, and have been turned into successful film franchises.

J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye is the story of the teenager Holden Caulfield, who feels disillusioned with his life at a boarding school and leaves for a break to go back to his native New York City. The book is told from Holden's point of view and presents an early version of teenage angst as it details Holden's wanderings. The book is a popular book still, and often appears on "Best Books" lists.

Ellen Olenska, Newland Archer, and May Welland are main characters in Edith Wharton's novel Age of Innocence. The novel was awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" was written in 1854 to commemorate the same event in the Crimean War, where a British brigade made a nearly suicidal charge at the Battle of Balaclava. Published just six weeks after the event, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem is a famous poetic depiction of heroic soldiering from the mid-nineteenth century, with its recitation of the marching, drilling, and cannon fire of the battle.

A rhyme scheme identified by letter describes each rhyme with the same letter. Thus, since the poem's first and third lines rhyme, the first stanza should be marked as ABAB. Because the second stanza has a new rhyming word, the second stanza should be marked CDCD.