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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.
Newspaper article titled 'Novel-reading a cause of female depravity'

Why Novels Will Destroy Your Mind

Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, novels were regarded as the video games or TikTok of their age — shallow, addictive, and dangerous.
Illustration of Edgar Allen Poe looking out window at raven, painted by Eduard Manet

Edgar Allan Poe Needs a Friend

Revisiting the relationships of “a man who never smiled.”
John Cage on the quiz show "Lascia o Raddoppia?"

Freedom for Sale

In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of American artists began to think of advertising and commercial imagery as the new avant-garde.
The writer (seen here in a picture from the eighteen-eighties) hid his own life story.

Are All Short Stories O. Henry Stories?

The writer’s signature style of ending—a final, thrilling note—has the touch of magic that distinguishes the form at its best.
A diagram of the phases of the Moon.

Man-Bat and Raven: Poe on the Moon

A new book recovers the reputation Poe had in his own lifetime of being a cross between a science writer, a poet, and a man of letters.
Nelson Algren sititing under a bridge

When the Government Supported Writers

Government support created jobs, built trust, and invigorated American literature. We should try it again.
Old cars piled up under a bridge overpass.

New York: The Invention of an Imaginary City

How nostalgic fantasies about the “authentic” New York City obscure the real-world place.
Lady with black hair tied up in a bun

Dickinson’s Improvisations

A new edition of Emily Dickinson’s Master letters highlights what remains blazingly intense and mysterious in her work.
Photograph of Mabel Loomis Todd with a child

Bitchy Little Spinster

Emily Dickinson and the woman in her orbit.
Mabel Dodge Luhan

The Strange Revival of Mabel Dodge Luhan

The memoirist is at the center of two new, very different books: a biography of D. H. Lawrence and a novel by Rachel Cusk. Has she been rescued or reduced?
Portrait of Sophia Thoreau

Sophia Thoreau to the Rescue!

Who made sure Henry David Thoreau's works came out after his death? His sister.
Richard Jean So and the cover of his book "Redlining Culture"

The History of Publishing Is a History of Racial Inequality

A conversation with Richard Jean So about combining data and literary analysis to understand how the publishing industry came to be dominated by white writers. 

What We Want from Richard Wright

A newly restored novel tests an old dynamic between readers and the author of “Native Son.”
Richard Wright at a typewriter

Richard Wright's Newly Uncut Novel Offers a Timely Depiction of Police Brutality

'The Man Who Lived Underground,' newly expanded from a story into a novel by the Library of America, may revise the seminal Black author's reputation.
Richard Wright

When Richard Wright Broke With the Communists

His posthumously released novel, “The Man Who Lived Underground,” was written during a crisis of political faith.
A collage of significant people from the time like the Beatles and Elvis.

How Americans Re-Learned to Think After World War II

In ‘The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War,’ Louis Menand explores the poetry, music, painting, dance and film that emerged during the Cold War.
Walt Whitman.

What Walt Whitman Knew About Democracy

For the great American poet, the peculiar qualities of grass suggested a way to resolve the tension between the individual and the group.
A mosaic of freedom and associated ideas

How Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom

The New Yorker critic's new book is a sequel of sorts to "The Metaphysical Club."
Henry Adams and his wife, Clover Adams at Wenlock Abbey, England, 1873

A Posthumous Life

Family blessings are a curse, or they can be. The life of Henry Adams explained in his book Education.
Photographs and a cover of Spectra, a literary magazine.

Spectra: The Poetry Movement That Was All a Hoax

In the experimental world of modernist poetry, literary journals were vulnerable to fake submissions.
engraving of Harriet Beecher Stowe
partner

A Forgotten 19th-Century Story Can Help Us Navigate Today’s Political Fractures

Reconciliation is good — but not at any cost.
H.P. Lovecraft.

The Shadow Over H.P. Lovecraft

Recent works inspired by his fiction struggle to reckon with his racist fantasies.
Thomas Edison exhibiting the phonograph to visitors at his laboratory

Bottled Authors

The predigital dream of the audiobook.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

The Poetics of Abolition

For poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, as for the Black Romantics, history is the repetition of anti-Black violence that has yet to be abolished.
Headshot of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Trouble with Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the beloved short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," but also supported eugenics and nativism.
Two women sitting on a rocking chair in a nineteenth century photograph

Postures of Transport: Sex, God, and Rocking Chairs

What if chairs could shift our state of consciousness, transporting the imagination into distant landscapes and ecstatic experiences, both religious and erotic?
F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Why Do We Keep Reading the Great Gatsby?

Ninety-six years after the book's publication, the characters of "The Great Gatsby" continue to mesmerize readers.
Illustration of a 1920s party in a martini glass

On Imagining Gatsby Before Gatsby

How a personal connection to Nick Carraway inspired the author to write the novel "Nick."

The Enduring Lessons of a New Deal Writers Project

The case for a Federal Writers' Project 2.0.

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