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1800s lithograph by George du Maurier showing a chair dance in an art studio.

Done in by Time

A review of Edwin Frank's short list of great 20th century novels.
by Joseph Epstein via Lamp Magazine on February 14, 2025
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
Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1857.

The Essential Emerson

The latest biography of the great transcendentalist captures the paradoxes of his Yankee mind.
by Allen Mendenhall via Law & Liberty on June 21, 2024
Spring Hill painting

The Pittsburgh School

Part of what defines Pittsburgh literature is the transcendent in the prosaic, the sacred in the profane. An intimation of beauty amid a kingdom of ugliness.
by Ed Simon via Belt Magazine on May 13, 2024

The Great American Novels

136 books that made America think.
via The Atlantic on March 14, 2024
A hand-drawn, slightly abstract image of a pink typewriter, using a QWERTY keyboard.

Page Against the Machine

Dan Sinykin’s history of corporate fiction.
by Mitch Therieau via Bookforum on February 6, 2024
Painting by Pablo Ventura called "War Souvenirs #9" depicting a soldier kissing a woman, another with a bicycle, and World War II propaganda posters.

Writing Under Fire

For a full understanding of any historical period, we must read the literature written while its events were still unfolding.
by Nathaniel Rich via New York Review of Books on November 30, 2023
Display of banned books or censored books at Books Inc independent bookstore.
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Book Bans Aren't the Only Threat to Literature in Classrooms

Literature is key to a healthy democracy, but schools are leaving books behind.
by Jonna Perrillo, Andrew Newman via Made By History on October 6, 2023
Black and white photograph of Lorraine Hansberry smoking a cigarette.

The Many Visions of Lorraine Hansberry

She’s been canonized as a hero of both mainstream literature and radical politics. Who was she really?
by Blair McClendon via The New Yorker on January 17, 2022
Still Life with Ham, 1625.

Thanksgiving and the Curse of Ham

19th-century African American writer Charles Chesnutt’s subversive literature.
by Imani Perry via The Atlantic on November 23, 2021
Abstract composition by Valentijn Edgar Van Uytvanck, 1918

Still Farther South

In 1838, as the U.S. began its Exploring Expedition to the South Seas, Edgar Allan Poe published a novel that masqueraded as a travelogue.
by John Tresch via The Public Domain Review on June 16, 2021
Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Other Obsession

Known as a master of horror, he also understood the power—and the limits—of science.
by Daniel Engber via The Atlantic on June 11, 2021
An image of William Faulkner and author André Malroux.

Faulkner Couldn’t Overcome Racism, But He Never Ignored It

That’s why the privileged White novelist’s work is still worth reading, Michael Gorra argues.
by Chandra Manning via Washington Post on October 2, 2020
A movie still featuring a close-up of two actors from The Age of Innocence

The Age of Innocence: How a US Classic Defined Its Era

Cameron Laux looks at how The Age of Innocence – published 100 years ago – marked a pivotal moment in US history.
by Cameron Laux via BBC News on September 23, 2020

Signs and Wonders

Reading the literature of past plagues and suddenly seeing our present reflected in a mirror.
by Francine Prose via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 14, 2020
James Baldwin.

The Vow James Baldwin Made to Young Civil Rights Activists

How James Baldwin confronted America's most exceptional lie.
by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. via Literary Hub on July 28, 2020
A hospital filled with patients during the influenza pandemic of 1918

How Pandemics Seep into Literature

The literature that arose from the influenza pandemic speaks to our current moment in profound ways, offering connections in the exact realms where art excels.
by Elizabeth Outka via The Paris Review on April 8, 2020
Photographs of Lilian Smith and Frank Yerby.

Frank Yerby and Lillian Smith: Challenging the Myths of Whiteness

Both Southerners. Both all but forgotten. Both, in their own ways, questioned the social constructions of race and white supremacy in their writings.
by Matthew Teutsch via The Bitter Southerner on January 9, 2020
Cover of "Cold Warriors" book.

Before Oprah’s Book Club, there was the CIA

‘Cold Warriors’ traces how the U.S. and Soviet government used writers like George Orwell and Boris Pasternak to wage ideological battles during the Cold War.
by Ethan Davison via The Outline on August 26, 2019
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling, American Imperialist

What the author of "If—" learned about empire from the United States
by Maya Jasanoff via The New Republic on August 22, 2019

What Herman Melville Can Teach Us About the Trump Era

He would point out that what plagues us are America's sins coming home to roost.
by Ariel Dorfman via The Nation on May 10, 2017
John Harvard statue by Daniel Chester French.

Reading Puritans and the Bard

Without the bawdy world of Falstaff and Prince Hal and of Shakespeare’s jesters, there would have been nothing for those dissenting Puritans to dissent from.
by Mark A. Peterson via Commonplace on October 1, 2006
Cinderella Tries on the Slipper, by Millikin and Lawley, c. 1890.
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If the Slipper Doesn’t Fit

A scorched shoe is a crucial part of Zelda Fitzgerald’s modern mythology. But there’s no proof it existed.
by Gabby Kiser via HNN on September 9, 2025
Dorothy Parker at work writing

Pretty Garrotte: Why We Need Dorothy Parker

While she always insisted that she wasn’t a ‘real’ critic, Dorothy Parker is more astute than most on matters of style.
by Kasia Boddy via London Review of Books on September 3, 2025
Collage of photos of Lionel Trilling.

Lionel Trilling and the Limits of Crisis-Thought

Lionel Trilling defends humanism amid crisis culture, warning that obsessing over evil can erode the self and our capacity for moral and creative agency.
by Sam Gee via The Hedgehog Review on September 3, 2025
Spooking the Censors

Spooking the Censors

In the 1950s, the CIA funded efforts to smuggle great works of literature into the Eastern Bloc.
by Michael O'Donnell via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 13, 2025
Paper in a typewriter, with the words "the end" just typed.

Words Left Behind: The Quandary of Posthumous Publishing

Joan Didion’s journal entries posthumously has sparked a wider ethical debate: Is it acceptable to publish a writer’s unfinished work after their death?
by Selina Alipour Tabrizi via The Saturday Evening Post on August 4, 2025
The four Harper Brothers, founders of the namesake publishing giant.
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The 200 Year History of American Virtue Capitalism

Despite the recent backlash against DEI, there is a longstanding tradition of virtue capitalism in the United States.
by Joseph P. Slaughter via Made By History on July 23, 2025
Painting of the Bay of San Francisco, by Eduard Hildebrandt.

Mark Twain, the Californian

In 1864 San Francisco, Twain found hardship, Bohemia, and his voice—transforming from local reporter to rising literary force.
by Ben Tarnoff via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 4, 2025
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Not Just the Dog-Eared Pages

Considering a novel as a whole, rather than as the sum of its parts, was an approach favored by mid-20th-century literary critics. It was also useful for fighting book bans.
by Anthony Aycock via HNN on June 3, 2025
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