Helen Plum Library

This documentary film about the life of the remarkable author and illustrator of The Tale Of Peter Rabbit, is based on the successful biography. The film is full of examples of Beatrix Potter's exquisite watercolors. Narrated by Lynn Redgrave, with music by Ernest V. Troost.

Learn more about Jane Austen and her own fascinating life at a time in England’s history. Take a tour around the English landscape and see the lovely locations that inspired Jane Austen’s novels.

William Sydney Porter was born in Greensboro, North Carolina on September 11, 1862. In due course, he became a licensed pharmacist. In his colorful lifetime, he would also become a bank teller, a bookkeeper, a clerk, and illustrator, a draftsman in the General Land Office…a newspaperman, an editor, reporter, columnist, and cartoonist. "Will," as his family and neighbors called him, also learned to break a stubborn bronco, lasso cattle, shear sheep,...

An in-depth biography of the famed author, Charles Dickens.

From PBS: British actor Derek Jacobi narrates this portrait of author Graham Greene, a British spy, doubting Catholic and manic-depressive who wrote critically acclaimed best-sellers, including The Quiet American, Brighton Rock, The End of the Affair and The Third Man. The documentary weaves Greene's novels and movies into the story of his life and reveals an extraordinary man who traveled the globe to escape the boredom of ordinary existence. Actor...

An exciting documentary following in the footsteps of Edgar Allan Poe to discover the mystery behind the man who wrote such classics as “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” and countless others.

Two films that provide a uniquely comprehensive, intimate and moving portrait of one of the great and lasting thinkers of the 20th century.

One of the most-recognized figures in American literary history: poet, patriot, and faithful advocate of democracy. But in his own time, critics denounced Walt Whitman as a "lunatic raving in pitiable delirium". This "American experience" production tells Whitman's life story, from his working class childhood in Long Island to his years as a newspaper reporter in Brooklyn when he struggled to support his impoverished family, then to his reckless pursuit...

Teamed with his friends Mickey, Neutron and Pedro, high school student Jim Carroll seems headed for a bright basketball career. But when pressures from his coach, his mom, and school seem to mount, Jim finds solace in all the wrong places, and the dark streets of New York begin to tear him apart

A look at the life of Reinaldo Arenas, from childhood in Cuba to his death in New York City. His writings and homosexuality get him in trouble with Castro's Cuba and he spends two years in prison before leaving for the United States