Sylvia Plath's Ariel against a background of bees

Sylvia Plath’s Fascination with Bees

The social organization of the apiary gave Sylvia Plath a tool for examining her aesthetic self, even as her personal world slipped into disarray.
Title page for Sinners in the hands of an angry God, 1741

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: Annotated

Jonathan Edwards’s sermon reflects the complicated religious culture of eighteenth-century America, influenced not just by Calvinism, but Newtonian physics as well.

Edmund Dulac’s Fairy Tales Go to War

One of the best-known illustrators of the “golden age of children’s gift books,” Dulac was also a subtle purveyor of Allied propaganda during the Great War.
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.
An illustration depicting two regency-era women speaking with an iMessage bubble

Is Jane Austen the Antidote to Social Media Overload?

Racking up likes and followers today resembles the nonstop friending of 19th-century England. But Austen's characters figured out how to disengage.
Viverra bengalensis

The Strange Case of Daniel Defoe’s Civet Scheme

In the 17th century, these animals were prized for their musk. So when the not-yet-famous writer Daniel Defoe needed quick cash, he turned to civets.
Paperback copies J.R.R. Tolkien's classics: The Hobbit; The Fellowship of the Ring; The Two Towers; and The Return of the King

J. R. R. Tolkien the Philologist

Before The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien was a philologist, a specialist in historical texts.