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The History of O. Henry's 'The Gift of the Magi'

The beloved Christmas short story may have been dashed off on deadline but its core message has endured.

Zombie Flu: How the 1919 Influenza Pandemic Fueled the Rise of the Living Dead

Did mass graves in the influenza pandemic help give rise to the living dead?

“Ulysses” on Trial

It was a setup: a stratagem worthy of wily Ulysses himself.

The Slow Clean

Mikaella Clements on the role of baths in twentieth-century literature.

Jenny Zhang on Reading Little Women and Wanting to Be Like Jo March

Looking to Louisa May Alcott's heroine for inspiration.

The Literal (and Figurative) Whiteness of Moby Dick

For Herman Melville, the color white could be horrifyingly bleak.

Pulp Fiction Helped Define American Lesbianism

In the 50s and 60s, steamy novels about lesbian relationships, marketed to men, gave closeted women needed representation.

Herman Melville at Home

The novelist drew on far-flung voyages to create his masterpiece. But he could finish it only at his beloved Berkshire farm.

A Universe of One’s Own

Only in the science fiction genre can one compare an alien to a woman.
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling in America

What happened to the great defender of Empire when he settled in the States?

Before Stonewall, There Was a Bookstore

Networks of activists transformed Stonewall from an isolated event into a turning point in the struggle for gay power.

What Maketh a Man

How queer artist J.C. Leyendecker invented an iconography of twentieth-century American masculinity.

“1984” at Seventy

Why we still read Orwell’s book of prophecy.

The Persistent Ghost of Ayn Rand, the Forebear of Zombie Neoliberalism

A review of Lisa Duggan's book, "Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed.”
An elderly Walt Whitman with his nurse Warren Fritzinger.

Walt Whitman's Boys

To appreciate who Whitman was, we have to reinterpret the poet in ways that have made generations of critical gatekeepers uncomfortable.

Whitman, Melville, & Julia Ward Howe: A Tale of Three Bicentennials

The difference between the careers and reputations of the three famous authors is about gender as well as genius.
Drawing of a woman being blown away holding a kite made of books

Margaret Fuller on the Social Value of Intellectual Labor and Why Artists Ought to Be Paid

“The circulating medium… is abused like all good things, but without it you would not have had your Horace and Virgil.”
Film poster for "Native Son."

"Native Son" and the Cinematic Aspirations of Richard Wright

Novelist Richard Wright yearned to break into film, but Hollywood's censorship of black stories left his aspirations unfulfilled.
Sunrise view with a marsh waterfront.

Why My Students Don’t Call Themselves ‘Southern’ Writers

On reckoning with a fraught literary history.

Reading in an Age of Catastrophe

A review of George Hutchinson's "Facing the Abyss: American Literature and Culture in the 1940s."

Literary Hoaxes and the Ethics of Authorship

What happens when we find out writers aren't who they said they were.
Film still of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

The Contested Legacy of Atticus Finch

Lee’s beloved father figure was a talking point during the Kavanaugh hearings and is now coming to Broadway. Is he still a hero?
Cover of Orwell's "1984."

Here are the Biggest Fiction Bestsellers of the Last 100 Years

(And what everyone read instead.)

How Horror Changed After WWI

The war created a new world, an alternate reality distinct from what most people before 1914 expected their lives to be.
James Baldwin.

James Baldwin’s Ideas and Activism during the 1980s

Baldwin's often overlooked final years of activism during the 1980's.

The Old Man and His Muse: Hemingway’s Toe-Curling Infatuation with Adriana Ivancich

For the last decade of his life, the sozzled Hemingway was in thrall to an Italian 30 years his junior.
Rudyard Kipling

Reconsidering Rudyard Kipling

Was the author and poet best known for 'The Jungle Book' and 'Kim' truly a racist imperialist?
Protesters with KKK hoods and Goldwater signs.
partner

How the Right Became Addicted to Conspiracies

The conservative conspiracy lit that paved the way for Donald Trump.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at his writing desk in Vermont.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Hid Out in a Tiny Vermont Village

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's best work was done in isolation, a long way from Soviet Russia.
Photographs of Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman.

When Wilde Met Whitman

As he told a friend years later, "the kiss of Walt Whitman is still on my lips."

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