The American writer was an enthusiast of the sciences, which may explain his decision to “adapt” a text about seashells for publication under his own name.

Ariel epitomizes mermaids now, but these beguiling creatures precede her by millennia, sparking imaginations the world over with a hearty embrace of otherness.

During World War II, GIs battled boredom with novels provided by the Armed Service Division, raising questions about the “feminizing” effect of reading.

Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, two writers in search of sexual and literary inspiration, modeled their most seductive characters on June Mansfield Miller.

Free from Russian dictates over language usage and education, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan prepare to embrace Latin lettering. It’s the latest chapter in the region’s fraught history of alphabet reform.

The sixteenth-century handwritten collection of poetry and commentary offers a glimpse of intellectual life at the court of King Henry VIII.

Fairy tales, many of which associate women’s beauty with goodness, act as scripts that pass along specific messages about women’s bodies and attractiveness.

The incarcerated editor of The Nash News in North Carolina shares about the power of higher ed and his work at the prison newspaper.

Dorothea and Gladys Cromwell fled the constrictions of high society for the freedoms of the literary world. Ravenous for greater purpose, the twins then went to war.

If Dracula represented the collective fears of his day, what do the likes of Slender Man and other internet monsters tell us about the zeitgeist of right now?