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Edgar Allan Poe

Poe vs. Himself: On the Writer’s One-Sided War with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The story of the Little Longfellow War.
by Anne Whitehouse via Literary Hub on July 24, 2023
Split frame image of Norman Mailer, in black and white.

My Norman Mailer Problem—and Ours

Digging down into the roots of white America’s infatuation with Black.
by Darryl Pinckney via The Nation on March 7, 2022
Henry Louis Gates Jr.

How Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Helped Remake the Literary Canon

The scholar has changed the way Black authors get read and the way Black history gets told.
by Henry Louis Gates Jr., David Remnick via The New Yorker on February 19, 2022
Painting of events and characters in the book Bambi, with a scared deer surrounded by violent acts of a person and dog hunting and predators capturing and eating prey.

“Bambi” Is Even Bleaker Than You Thought

The original book is far more grisly than the beloved Disney classic—and has an unsettling message about humanity.
by Kathryn Schulz via The New Yorker on January 17, 2022
Cartoon of Philip Roth at a typewriter, with the typescript turning into himself looking back at him

The Possessed

Joshua Cohen imagines how Philip Roth would review his own biographer.
by Joshua Cohen via Harper's on February 9, 2021
Statue of Shakespeare, Central Park, New York City.

Shakespeare’s Contentious Conversation With America

James Shapiro’s recent book looks at why Shakespeare has been a mainstay of the cultural and political conflicts of the country since its founding.
by Alisa Solomon via The Nation on December 17, 2020
Flannery O'Connor standing outside at her Georgia home.

How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?

She has become an icon of American letters. Now readers are reckoning with another side of her legacy.
by Paul Elie via The New Yorker on June 15, 2020
Illustration of WWI soldiers hiking thorugh a field; the painting uses light pastel colors and surrounds the soldiers with mist

On the Sexist Reception of Willa Cather’s World War I Novel

From Hemingway to Mencken, no one thought a woman could write about combat.
by Rebecca Onion via Literary Hub on October 21, 2019
Collage of paper clippings including headless a running man, an explosion where his head would be, and a jet flying alongside him.

Ante Up: The Scales of Power Seen Through Norman Podhoretz’s Eyes

In retrospect, it was peculiar but not surprising that the Jewish-American novel peaked early—halfway through the beginning, to be precise.
by Frank Guan via The Point on September 29, 2018

What Can We Learn From Utopians of the Past?

Four nineteenth-century authors offered blueprints for a better world—but their progressive visions had a dark side.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on July 30, 2018
Edgar Alan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s Hatchet Jobs

The great short story writer and poet wrote many a book review.
by Mark Athitakis via Humanities on October 20, 2017
Illustrated sperm whale with blue stripes of water.

The Original 1851 Reviews of Moby Dick

There was little indication 166 years ago that the book would enter the canon of great American fiction.
by George Ripley, Henry F. Chorley, London John Bull, William Young via Literary Hub on September 8, 2017

Green House: A Brief History of “American Poetry”

Tracing its emergence of as a distinct cultural institution.
by Frank Guan via Prelude on September 22, 2014
Herman Melville; illustration by Maya Chessman.

Siding with Ahab

Can we appreciate Herman Melville’s work without attributing to it schemes for the uplift of modern man?
by Christopher Benfey via New York Review of Books on July 25, 2024
Norman Mailer.

The Tough Guy Crew

Jewish masculinity and the New York intellectuals.
by Leonard Benardo via New Statesman on June 12, 2024
Misery and Fortune of Women (1930).

The Lost Abortion Plot

Power and choice in the 1930s novel.
by Julia Cooke via The Point on June 11, 2024
Illustration of a literary rejection letter.

There Is No Point in My Being Other Than Honest with You: On Toni Morrison’s Rejection Letters

Autopsies of a changing publishing industry; frustrations with readers' tastes; and sympathies for poets and authors drawn to commercially hopeless genres.
by Melina Moe via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 26, 2024
Robert Frost on his farm near Ripton, Vermont.

America’s Great Poet of Darkness

A reconsideration of Robert Frost at 150.
by Ed Simon via The Hedgehog Review on March 26, 2024

Past Tense

The historical novel isn’t cool. Popular? Yes. Enduring? Yes. A bit, well — for nerds? Also yes. Coolness lies in being at the right place at the right time.
by David Schurman Wallace via The Drift on March 12, 2024
Image from the filmstrip, showing a grieved woman with her head in her hands, being comforted by a man standing beside her

Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Hands of the Red Scared

Again and again, a fervant British anticommunist's filmstrip of the novel shows images of women in states of distress.
by Georgina Blackburn via Commonplace on February 6, 2024
Willa Cather wearing a mink shawl and a large hat in Paris

Prairie Swooner

The hardscrabble origins and unique vision of novelist Willa Cather.
by Eric Banks via Bookforum on February 6, 2024
Carl Van Vechten's portrait of John A. Williams, 1962.

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted

John A. Williams’s unsung novel.
by Gene Seymour via Bookforum on February 6, 2024
Hannah Ardent

Anatomist of Evil

Lyndsey Stonebridge’s book hurls us deeper into Hannah Arendt’s thinking, showing us that there was muddle rather than method at the heart of it.
by Stuart Jeffries via Literary Review on February 1, 2024
Black and white portrait of Jones Very

The Voice of Unfiltered Spirit

In the poetry of Jones Very, whom his contemporaries considered “eccentric” and “mad," the self is detached from everything by an intoxicated egoism.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on January 18, 2024
Cover of Ned Blackhawk's book; a pole with feathers attached is next to the title, "The Rediscovery of America"

The Promise and Perils of Synthetic Native History

Over the past year, two prominent historians have invited readers to rethink the master narrative of US history.
by Gregory D. Smithers via H-Net on January 11, 2024
Painting of waves crashing in the ocean by Winslow Homer

After Melville

In every generation, writers and readers find new ways to plumb the depths of Herman Melville and his work.
by Andrew Schenker via The Baffler on November 22, 2023
The covers of "Romance in Marseille" and "Amiable with Big Teeth" by Claude McCay over a blue blackground splattered with paint.

Zeal, Wit, and Fury: The Queer Black Modernism of Claude McKay

Considering the suppressed legacy of Claude McKay’s two “lost” novels, “Amiable with Big Teeth” and “Romance in Marseille.”
by Gary Edward Holcomb via Los Angeles Review of Books on September 11, 2023
Shelby Foote with a drawing of a Civil War battle superimposed over him.

The South’s Jewish Proust

Shelby Foote, failed novelist and closeted member of the Tribe, turned the Civil War into a masterpiece of American literature.
by Blake Smith via Tablet on September 6, 2023
Black students walking a gauntlet of white students to enter Clinton High School.

Why Did They Bomb Clinton High School?

It was the first Southern school to be integrated by court order, and the town reluctantly prepared to comply. Then an acolyte of Ezra Pound’s showed up.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on July 31, 2023
Charles Dickens as he appears when reading, Harper’s Weekly (December 7th, 1867).

A Christmas Carol In Nineteenth-Century America, 1844-1870

What were Americans' immediate responses to "A Christmas Carol," and how did Dickens' reading tours and eventual death reshape its meaning?
by Thomas Ruys Smith via Comparative American Studies on July 27, 2023
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