Virginia Woolf’s Only Play
Based on Woolf's own family, Freshwater was a tongue-in-cheek comedy full of inside jokes, written to entertain members of the Bloomsbury Group.
Lost in Translation: Ezra Pound’s Imagism and the Angel Island Poets
As Pound was making a splash with “translations” of Chinese poetry, immigrants from China were etching poems of despair into the walls of a detention facility.
Olivia: An Oft-Overlooked Lesbian Novel
It took some fifteen years to bring Dorothy Strachey Bussy’s remarkable roman à clef to print, thanks to André Gide’s lukewarm reception.
Marie Bashkirtseff’s Diary
The art student died young, but her diary lived on to inspire future writers, including Anaïs Nin, Katherine Mansfield, and Mary MacLane.
American Immigrant Literature Gets an Update
Despite the historical gulf between canonical and recent immigrant writing, one constant is the mark that new immigrant artists leave on US literature.
Her Bounty Is Boundless
From the first actor—a man—to play Juliet to the “girl boss” version on Broadway, Shakespeare’s young lover offers something new in every iteration.
Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry
Set during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920, Babel’s novel captured the indiscriminate violence and injustice of warfare.
Ode to Samuel Delany
Composed half-a-century ago, The Ballad of Beta-2 was a science-fiction vision of the future that speaks directly to our present.
The Short-Lived Le Navire d’Argent
Despite its short run, Adrienne Monnier’s literary review made its mark on modernist literature, publishing the work of James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Walt Whitman.
Michael Gold: Red Scare Victim
The author of Jews Without Money, a proletarian lit best-seller, was ostracized for his Communism and derided for his prose. Today he is all but forgotten.