The Wonderland Awaits: Researching The Good Echo
Author Shena McAuliffe describes how she used JSTOR to research her debut novel, The Good Echo.
Sorry, but Jane Eyre Isn’t the Romance You Want It to Be
Charlotte Brontë, a woman whose life was steeped in stifled near-romance, refused to write love as ruly, predictable, or safe.
James Joyce’s NSFW Love Letters
The often explicit letters James Joyce wrote to Nora Barnacle contain the same mass of contradictions as his famous literary works, like Ulysses.
The Physical Pleasures of Jane Austen’s Persuasion
Smoldering glances? Romantic letters? Forbidden love? Why Persuasion may be the most seductive of Jane Austen's novels.
The Disappointing Reality of Nineteenth-Century Courtship
For white, middle-class women in the nineteenth-century United States, courtship and marriage offered less emotional intimacy than their friendships with other women.
The Business of the Romance Novel
How romance novels—despite their decided lack of cultural clout—became big business for the publishing industry.
Asian Families, the RAND Book, and Science Fiction
New books and scholarship from Stanford University Press, University of Minnesota, and MIT Press.
Was Modernism Meant to Keep the Working Classes Out?
In the 19th century, more working class readers started partaking in contemporary fiction. Modernist literature, however, was specifically not for them.
Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of Resistance
The dark, absurdist humor of Samuel Beckett's work was directly informed by his time in the French Resistance during World War II.