Sugawara no Michizane ranks among the best-known poets of the Heian period, although he must be among the least often read. Through the Nara period, Michizane's ancestors had served as minor officials at court. The move of the capital to Heian marked a change in the family's fortunes. By the time of Michizane's birth, the Sugawara were known as a family of court scholars. In Michizane's world, scholarship meant a form of Sinology that combined mastery of the Chinese classics with the ability to make practical use of such knowledge. Compositions included both prose and poetry, both official documents and personal expressions. Michizane also wrote waka and associated with some of the major waka poets of his day. Most of Michizane's prose consists of official documents and religious writings, often drafted for others less skilled at composition in Chinese. In Japanese, one rarely wrote of love for one's children. In Chinese, Michizane wrote very affecting poems on that subject.

Periodicals of the latter half of the seventeenth century were usually characterized by two traits: first, their authors were generally not professional writers but amateurs who took up their pens for a cause; and, second, when the cause no longer proved of political, religious or social consequence, the periodical was discontinued. Politics and religion generated the most late seventeenth-century periodicals; scholarly and scientific interests prompted the next largest category. Whereas the seventeenth-century periodical had primarily been produced by amateurs, the eighteenth-century periodical was largely written and conducted by what would later be called the 'professional' writer. Samuel Johnson produced biographies and parliamentary reports for the Gentleman's Magazine in the late 1730s, later turning out the twice-weekly essay sheet the Rambler and contributing regular essays to the Adventurer and the Universal Chronicle. The modern magazine had its origin in periodicals comprising materials so various that the early eighteenth century referred to them as 'miscellanies'.

The Old Testament is a collection of religious writings which, whatever their individual origins, are in their final form directed to the maintenance of the life of a community which thought of itself as being in a special sense the people of God. A great deal of attention has been paid in recent years to form critical analysis of Old Testament material. This was applied especially to the psalms, the types of which were traced by Hermann Gunkel and further developed; analysis of psalms outside Israel revealed the same patterns of construction. This chapter considers a narrative which appears twice in the Old Testament, in 2 Sam. 24 and 1 Chron. 21. One variety of Old Testament literature is provided by the prophetic books, containing an immense wealth of material of many different kinds. From the point of view of content, no completely sharp division can be made between the prophetic literature and other parts of the Old Testament.