Edgar Allan Poe (Sort of) Wrote a Book About Seashells
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.
Mermaids: Myth, Kith and Kin
Ariel epitomizes mermaids now, but these beguiling creatures precede her by millennia, sparking imaginations the world over with a hearty embrace of otherness.
Books on the Battlefield
During World War II, GIs battled boredom with novels provided by the Armed Service Division, raising questions about the “feminizing” effect of reading.
June Miller: More Than An Erotic Muse?
Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, two writers in search of sexual and literary inspiration, modeled their most seductive characters on June Mansfield Miller.
Alpha. Bravo. Cyrillic.
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 Devonshire Manuscript
The sixteenth-century handwritten collection of poetry and commentary offers a glimpse of intellectual life at the court of King Henry VIII.
Children’s Fairy Tales and Feminine Beauty
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.
What’s It Like to Be an Editor of a Prison Newspaper?
The incarcerated editor of The Nash News in North Carolina shares about the power of higher ed and his work at the prison newspaper.
Strange, Inglorious, Humble Things
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.
The Horror!
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?