10,807 articles
Old Gujarati literature
Old Gujarati literature, also called Maru-Gurjar, is writing in Old Gujarati from about 1251 to 1650, produced mainly by Jain monks as verse religious narratives called rasa.
Old High German incantations
Old High German incantations (Segen, Zaubersprüche) are short magical charms meant to cure or change things by the spoken word, preserved in 9th- and 10th-century manuscripts, most famously the two pagan Merseburg incantations.
Old Indian Legends
Old Indian Legends is a 1901 collection of fourteen Dakota tales, centered on the spider trickster Iktomi, retold in English by the Yankton Sioux writer Zitkála-Šá (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin).
Old Mortality
Old Mortality is a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, published on 2 December 1816 as part of Tales of My Landlord, set in Scotland in 1679.
Old Mother Hubbard
Old Mother Hubbard is an English nursery rhyme, Roud 19334, about an old woman and her talented dog. Sarah Catherine Martin's 1805 Comic Adventures, published by John Harris, became the definitive fourteen-verse version.
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, T. S. Eliot's 1939 Faber & Faber light-verse collection published under the pseudonym Old Possum, names cats such as Macavity, Mr Mistoffelees and Old Deuteronomy and became the source of Lloyd Webber's Cats.
Old Shatterhand
Old Shatterhand is Karl May's fictional German first-person narrator and Westman hero, blood brother of Winnetou, named for his fist blows; May claimed the identity himself from 1894.
Old Straight Road
Old Straight Road (also Straight Road, Lost Road, Lost Straight Road) is Tolkien's Arda concept: the route by which Elves alone sail to Valinor after Númenor's Downfall made the world round, developed in his time-travel stories.
Old Tales Retold
Old Tales Retold (故事新编, Gushi xinbian) is a 1936 collection of eight short stories by the Chinese writer Lu Xun that retells ancient myths in modern vernacular prose.
Old World Landowners
Old World Landowners (Старосветские помещики) is an 1835 short story by Nikolai Gogol about an elderly Ukrainian landowning couple, published in his collection Mirgorod and ending in decline and death.
Old Yiddish biblical epic
The Old Yiddish biblical epic was a genre of rhymed vernacular verse by Ashkenazi Jewish poets, retelling biblical stories in German epic form from the late 1300s to the early 1600s.
Old Yiddish epic
Old Yiddish epic is a body of narrative verse in the Ashkenazi Jewish vernacular, spanning roughly 1382 to 1730 in biblical and secular branches, including Dukus Horant and the Shmuel-bukh.
Olive Kitteridge
Olive Kitteridge: Elizabeth Strout's 2008 Random House novel in stories, also called a short story cycle, set in Crosby, Maine; retired teacher Olive links 13 stories; won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; adapted into the 2014 Emmy-winning HBO miniseries with Frances McDormand.
Olive Oyl
Olive Oyl is a comic-strip character created by Elzie Crisler Segar for Thimble Theatre, debuting December 19, 1919, nearly ten years before Popeye; originally Ham Gravy's girlfriend, she became Popeye's sweetheart, star of Fleischer and Famous Studios cartoons voiced by Mae Questel and others, played by Shelley Duvall in 1980, and public domain in her original form in the United States.
Oliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is Charles Dickens's second novel, serialized in Bentley's Miscellany 1837-1839. An orphan's plea for more gruel became the classic indictment of the 1834 New Poor Law workhouse system.
Oliver Twist (character)
Oliver Twist, protagonist of Dickens's Oliver Twist (The Parish Boy's Progress, serialized 1837-1839), a workhouse orphan aged 9-12 whose innocence anchors the novel's attack on the 1834 Poor Law; criticized as saintly and passive, endlessly adapted on screen and stage.
Ollantay
Ollantay is a Quechua-language tragicomedy in three acts from colonial Peru, first published in 1853, about a rebel Inca general who loves a princess of royal blood.
Olympian Odes
The Olympian Odes (Ὀλυμπιόνικοι, Olympionikoi) are a book of fourteen victory odes by the Greek lyric poet Pindar, composed to celebrate athletes' wins at the ancient Olympic games.
Ómagyar Mária-siralom
The Ómagyar Mária-siralom (Old Hungarian Lamentations of Mary) is a medieval Hungarian lament of the Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross, regarded as the first surviving poem written in Hungarian.
Omar Khayyam (عمر خیام)
Omar Khayyam (عمر خیام), Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and quatrain poet of Nishapur (ca. 1048-1123), known for cubic equations solved by conics, the Saljuq Isfahan observatory, the Robāʿiyāt, and FitzGerald's Rubáiyát.
Omegaverse
Omegaverse, also called A/B/O or Alpha/Beta/Omega, is a speculative erotic fiction subgenre from Supernatural fandom (2010) built on alpha/beta/omega hierarchies, heats, knotting, and pheromones, now spanning manga, publishing, and live action.
Omeros
Omeros is a book-length narrative poem by the Saint Lucian poet Derek Walcott, published in 1990, that reworks Homeric epic themes in a Caribbean setting.
Omni-Man
Omni-Man (Nolan Grayson) is a Viltrumite superhero-conqueror from Image Comics' Invincible (2003) by Kirkman and Walker; father of Invincible, Guardians of the Globe's killer, voiced by J.K. Simmons, originally named Supra-Man.
Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (전지적 독자 시점)
Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (전지적 독자 시점, ORV) is a Korean fantasy web novel by singNsong (싱숑), published from 2018 in 551 main chapters, about Kim Dokja, sole reader of an apocalyptic web novel; adapted into a hit webtoon, 2025 film, and announced anime.
On Ancient and Modern Russia
On Ancient and Modern Russia (Записка о древней и новой России) is an 1811 political memorandum by Nikolay Karamzin defending autocracy to Emperor Alexander I.
On and Off: Work-Life Imbalance
On and Off: Work-Life Imbalance (Kaisha to Shiseikatsu: On to Off, 会社と私生活－オンとオフ－) is a romance manga by Shinnosuke Kanazawa about office coworkers Amata and Hanku, a lolita-fashion man and punk woman who bond off the clock without recognizing each other; serialized on Gangan Pixiv since 2023, licensed in English by Square Enix.
On Chesil Beach
On Chesil Beach is Ian McEwan's 2007 novella about Edward and Florence, both 22, on a disastrous 1962 wedding night in Dorset; it won the 2008 Galaxy Book of the Year award and was filmed by Dominic Cooke with Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is Ocean Vuong's 2019 Penguin Press debut novel, a letter from queer Vietnamese American writer Little Dog to his illiterate mother, set in Hartford, Connecticut; NBA 2019 longlist, PEN/Faulkner finalist, A24 film directed by Levan Akin.
On Fairy-Stories
On Fairy-stories, J.R.R. Tolkien's Andrew Lang Lecture (St Andrews, 8 March 1939, published 1947), defines the fairy-story genre, coining sub-creation, Secondary World, and eucatastrophe, and argues fairy-stories are for adults, not children.
On Female Culture
On Female Culture (Sobre cultura femenina) is a 1950 critical essay, the master's thesis of Mexican writer Rosario Castellanos, asking whether a female culture exists.