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Panting of a woman lounging with a book, titled “Dolce far niente” (The Sweetness of Doing Nothing), by Auguste Toulmouche, 1877.

We’re Distracted. That’s Nothing New.

Ever since Thoreau headed to Walden, our attention has been wandering.
by Caleb Smith via The Chronicle of Higher Education on March 10, 2023
Cover of "Gravity's Rainbow," depicting a orange-red sky over a small city.

History Is Hard to Decode

On 50 years of Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.”
by M. Keith Booker via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 28, 2023
The Armed Services Edition of the book "The Grapes of Wrath."
partner

America Fought Its Own Battle Over Books Before it Fought the Nazis

Recent years have witnessed a record number of challenges against books, especially in school libraries. But attempts to ban certain books isn't new in the U.S.
by Brianna Labuskes via HNN on February 22, 2023
Painting of flowers called "The Island Garden," by Childe Hassam, 1892.

A Wiser Sympathy

How Emily Dickinson, scientists, and other writers theorized plant intelligence in the nineteenth century.
by Mary Kuhn via Lapham’s Quarterly on February 15, 2023
From left to right, Langston Hughes with Charles S. Johnson; E. Franklin Frazier; Rudolph Fisher and Hubert T. Delaney.

Why Harlem? Considering the Site of “Civil Rights by Copyright,” 100 Years Later

The confluence of Black modernity, self-determinism, and belongingness of Harlem's housing.
by Bo McMillan via Literary Hub on February 13, 2023
Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe Had a Promising Military Career. Then He Blew it Up.

Netflix’s “The Pale Blue Eye” portrays Edgar Allan Poe as a young West Point cadet. Here’s the true story of his brief, failed military career.
by Dave Kindy via Retropolis on January 19, 2023
Books from the 1990s.

What Literature Do We Study From the 1990s?

The turn-of-the-century literary canon, using data from college syllabi.
by Matthew Daniels via The Pudding on January 11, 2023
Painting of classical ruins, called the 'Temple of Aphaea, Aegina,' by John Rollin Tilton.

18th- and 19th-Century Americans of All Races, Classes & Genders Looked to the Ancient Mediterranean for Inspiration

In a new land, the ancient past held special meaning.
by Sean P. Burrus via The Conversation on November 21, 2022
Woman standing on a wall of books, holding a megaphone, 1919.

Choice Reading

Nineteenth-century New York City was filled with books, bibliophilia, and marginalia.
by Denise Gigante via Lapham’s Quarterly on November 21, 2022
Edith Wharton.

Why Do Women Want?: Edith Wharton’s Present Tense

"The Custom of the Country" and its unique relationship with ideas of feminism and the culture of the early 20th century elite.
by Sarah Blackwood via The Paris Review on November 1, 2022
1928 painting of a girl getting baptized in a pool, surrounded by a crowd on a farm.

Trouble in River City

Two recent books examine the idea of the Midwest as a haven for white supremacy and patriarchy.
by Caroline Fraser via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2022
Colorful lithograph showing the "Department of Electricity," a building with electrical lights positioned along the water, with a crowd of people entering

Colonizing the Cosmos: Astor’s Electrical Future

John Jacob Astor’s "A Journey in Other Worlds" is a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future.
by Iwan Rhys Morus via The Public Domain Review on September 14, 2022
Collage of documents and photographs relating to Younghill Kang.

Younghill Kang Is Missing

How an Asian American literary pioneer fell into obscurity.
by Esther Kim via Asian American Writers' Workshop on September 7, 2022
Drawing of a theater performer looking off to the side.

How Love Conquered a Convent: Catholicism and Gender Disorder on the 1830s Stage

'Pet of the Petticoats' extends the reach of Anglo-Atlantic anti-Catholicism to the stage, illustrating the ways its tropes and anxieties moved across genres.
by Sara Lampert via Commonplace on September 7, 2022
"Mademoiselle V...in the Costume of an Espada," by Edouard Manet, a painting of a woman dressed as a matador holding sword and cloth.

A Private Matter

Abortion and "The Scarlet Letter."
by Dana Medoro via Lapham’s Quarterly on August 3, 2022
Invisible Man book cover with Ralph Ellison on the back

Broke and Blowing Deadlines

How Ralph Ellison got Invisible Man into the canon.
by Anne Trubek via Notes From A Small Press on June 29, 2022
Black and white photo of Gertrude Stein writing at desk.

Gertrude Stein's Pulp Fiction

It has taken decades for an appreciation of Stein’s crime fiction to really take hold.
by Gertrude Stein, Cornelius Fortune, Mark McGurl, Brooks Landon via JSTOR Daily on June 22, 2022
Painting of an ocean by the British painter J. M. W. Turner, 1840-1845. Pictured is a stormy sea, its waves breaking on a shore.

The Sea According to Rachel Carson

Her first three books were odes to the world’s bodies of water and their creative power over all life forms.
by Hannah Gold via The Nation on May 17, 2022
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
Photo of Jack Kerouac, 1956

Jack Kerouac’s Journey

For "On the Road"’s author, it was a struggle to write, then a struggle to live with its fame. “My work is found, my life is lost,” he wrote.
by Joyce Johnson via New York Review of Books on March 2, 2022
Illustration of a bookshelf at CYCO with a bust of I.L. Peretz.

The Joy of Yiddish Books

The language sustained a Jewish diasporan secular culture. Today, that heritage survives in a gritty corner of Queens to be claimed by a new generation.
by Molly Crabapple via New York Review of Books on February 26, 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
Watercolor portrait of Bronson Alcott, a 19th century American philosopher and educator.

New England Ecstasies

The transcendentalists thought all human inspiration was divine, all nature a miracle.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on February 16, 2022
A picture of an eerie dark house.

This House Is Still Haunted: An Essay In Seven Gables

A spectre is haunting houses—the spectre of possession.
by Adam Fales via Dilettante Army on February 15, 2022
Vintage drawing of a Victorian-era drugstore

Was Edgar Allan Poe a Habitual Opium User?

While Poe was likely using opium, the efforts to keep him quiet suggest that he was also drinking.
by Elizabeth Kelly Gray via Commonplace on February 7, 2022
Painting of a Puritan family sitting around a table with books.

Read More Puritan Poetry

Coming to love Puritan poetry is an odd aesthetic journey. It's the sort of thing you expect people partial to bowties and gin gimlets to get involved with.
by Ed Simon via The Millions on February 4, 2022
William Faulkner in front of bookshelf

William Faulkner’s Tragic Vision

In Yoknapatawpha County, the past never speaks with a single voice.
by Jonathan Clarke via City Journal on January 4, 2022
Black and white image of two women, one Black and one white, greeting each other with children in the background.

As One of the First White Kids in a Black School, I Learned Not to Fear History

Today, some Virginians would ‘protect’ children from the kind of valuable education that I had when my dad was governor.
by Woody Holton via Washington Post on November 12, 2021
Illustration of a ghost, resembling a woman figure.

Edith Wharton’s Bewitching, Long-Lost Ghost Stories

A reissued collection, long out of print, revives the author’s masterly stories of horror and unease.
by Anna Russell via The New Yorker on October 24, 2021
Collage of Stephen Crane with Civil War scenes

The Miracle of Stephen Crane

Born after the Civil War, he turned himself into its most powerful witness—and modernized the American novel.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on October 18, 2021
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