The first edition cover of "Red Cavalry" by Isaac Babel

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.
The Devonshire Manuscript facsimile 6v

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.
King Arthur's knights, gathered at the Round Table to celebrate Pentecost, see a vision of the Holy Grail.

T. S. Eliot and the Holy Grail

The Nobel Laureate drew on a centuries-old legend when he put the Fisher King in The Waste Land.
Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë’s Lost Second Novel

The author of the English literary classic Wuthering Heights died tragically young, leaving her second novel unfinished.
Georgie Hyde-Lees

W. B. Yeats’ Live-in “Spirit Medium”

In the Victorian era, a different kind of ghostwriting became popular—largely because it allowed men to take all the credit.
Bedridden King Charles VI

The French King Who Believed He Was Made of Glass

King Charles VI of France was the most exalted representative of a rash of "Glass Men," who appeared throughout Europe between the 15th and 17th centuries.
Alexander The Great mosaic

The Other Alexander the Great

Stories emerged in the centuries after Alexander the Great’s death. They revolved around Alexander's failures, not his victories. The portrait that emerges is strangely poignant.
Geek Love

Geek Love: Our Modern Monster Story

The writer Katherine Dunn died last week at age 70. Anyone who ever felt like an outsider found a friend in her 1989 novel Geek Love.
Close-up of the dictionary entry to 'colour'

Yas Queen! It’s the Spelling Reform School for Wayward Words

Debates over English spelling reform have existed for centuries.
An illustration from Alice in Wonderland depicting Alice's encounter with a hookah smoking caterpillar

Off With Their Heads! Alice In Wonderland Turns 150

How Alice in Wonderland changed how we look at time and space.