A Mini History of the Tiny Purse
The purse has always been political, a reflection of changing economic realities and gender roles.
Sorry, but Jane Eyre Isn’t the Romance You Want It to Be
Charlotte Brontë, a woman whose life was steeped in stifled near-romance, refused to write love as ruly, predictable, or safe.
The Ladylike Language of Letters
Letters reveal how language changes. They also offer a peek into the way people--especially women--have always constructed their private and public selves.
What Exactly Is Jane Austen’s Sanditon?
An unfinished, fragmentary Austen novel is being adapted for television. Can we ever know what Austen meant for this book to eventually become?
My Summer of Watching Little Women
What the author learned from his mother, a feminist academic doing a research project on film adaptations of Little Women.
In Praise of Small Presses
Writers have long run their own small presses in order to publish voices that might otherwise stay silent.
Shirley Jackson and the Female Gothic
Critic Ruth Franklin has published a new biography on the criminally overlooked novelist, short story writer, and essayist Shirley Jackson.
The Poetry Up There: An Interview With Skyfaring Author and Pilot Mark Vanhoenacker
Mark Vanhoenacker, pilot and onetime PhD candidate in East African history speaks about Skyfaring, his debut book about aviation.
Our Obsession with Orphans: A Short History from Jane Eyre to Annie
Little Orphan Annie is the latest in a sequence of pop culture foundlings, but America’s orphans of the Great Depression weren’t endearing at all.