Eleven Poems for Fall
Cozy up to autumn with verse from Dylan Thomas, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Frost, Rita Dove, and more.
Sor Juana, Founding Mother of Mexican Literature
How a 17th-century nun wrote poetry, dramas, and comedies that took on the inequities and double standards women faced in society.
The Lonely Hearts of the Algonquin Round Table
The "Vicious Circle" of the Algonquin Round Table included sharp-tongued wits like Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott. But it wasn't always vicious.
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 Periodicals That Shaped American Boyhood
19th-century "story papers" gave boys stories they liked, while also encouraging readers to contribute their own material and tell their own stories.
What The War of the Worlds Had to Do with Tasmania
H. G. Wells's famous science fiction novel imagines what would happen if Martians did to Great Britain what Europeans did to Tasmania.
The Secret Syndicate behind Nancy Drew
If you remember your grade-school reading log, the Nancy Drew mysteries are by Carolyn Keene. Only she never existed.
Mary Shelley’s Obsession with the Cemetery
The author of Frankenstein always saw love and death as connected. She visited the cemetery to commune with her dead mother. And with her lover.
How Truman Capote Advanced the New Journalism
In Cold Blood changed the face of journalism. And yet years after its publication, we are still asking: how much of it was factually true?