Practical Classics:

Da Book. In the window of my neighborhood bookshop and available wherever fine books are sold. eBook version out next week.

Fun fact: Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was originally to be published on Christmas Day 1884. The illustration above messed that all up. 

Look at the picture on the left. Does it look like Huck's Uncle Silas has got an erection in his pants? That's what the publisher thought and, fearing retribution, recalled 30,000 copies of Huck Finn and corrected the "error." 

Maya Angelou took the title of her autobiography from the poem "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Complete text of the poem is below. 

Sympathy

BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!

    When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;   

When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,   

And the river flows like a stream of glass;

    When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,   

And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—

I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing

    Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;   

For he must fly back to his perch and cling   

When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;

    And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars   

And they pulse again with a keener sting—

I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

    When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—

When he beats his bars and he would be free;

It is not a carol of joy or glee,

    But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,   

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—

I know why the caged bird sings!