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A portrait of Edgar Allen Poe.

The Most Overrated Writer in America

Do people really like Edgar Allen Poe?
by Naomi Kanakia via Woman of Letters on March 18, 2025

Zora Neale Hurston’s Rediscovered Novel

A new publication obscures the canonical writer.
by Tiana Reid via The Yale Review on March 11, 2025
Edgar Allan Poe

Poe vs. Himself: On the Writer’s One-Sided War with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The story of the Little Longfellow War.
by Anne Whitehouse via Literary Hub on July 24, 2023
Split frame image of Norman Mailer, in black and white.

My Norman Mailer Problem—and Ours

Digging down into the roots of white America’s infatuation with Black.
by Darryl Pinckney via The Nation on March 7, 2022
Henry Louis Gates Jr.

How Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Helped Remake the Literary Canon

The scholar has changed the way Black authors get read and the way Black history gets told.
by Henry Louis Gates Jr., David Remnick via The New Yorker on February 19, 2022
Painting of events and characters in the book Bambi, with a scared deer surrounded by violent acts of a person and dog hunting and predators capturing and eating prey.

“Bambi” Is Even Bleaker Than You Thought

The original book is far more grisly than the beloved Disney classic—and has an unsettling message about humanity.
by Kathryn Schulz via The New Yorker on January 17, 2022
Cartoon of Philip Roth at a typewriter, with the typescript turning into himself looking back at him

The Possessed

Joshua Cohen imagines how Philip Roth would review his own biographer.
by Joshua Cohen via Harper’s on February 9, 2021
Statue of Shakespeare, Central Park, New York City.

Shakespeare’s Contentious Conversation With America

James Shapiro’s recent book looks at why Shakespeare has been a mainstay of the cultural and political conflicts of the country since its founding.
by Alisa Solomon via The Nation on December 17, 2020
Flannery O'Connor standing outside at her Georgia home.

How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?

She has become an icon of American letters. Now readers are reckoning with another side of her legacy.
by Paul Elie via The New Yorker on June 15, 2020
Illustration of WWI soldiers hiking thorugh a field; the painting uses light pastel colors and surrounds the soldiers with mist

On the Sexist Reception of Willa Cather’s World War I Novel

From Hemingway to Mencken, no one thought a woman could write about combat.
by Rebecca Onion via Literary Hub on October 21, 2019
Collage of paper clippings including headless a running man, an explosion where his head would be, and a jet flying alongside him.

Ante Up: The Scales of Power Seen Through Norman Podhoretz’s Eyes

In retrospect, it was peculiar but not surprising that the Jewish-American novel peaked early—halfway through the beginning, to be precise.
by Frank Guan via The Point on September 29, 2018

What Can We Learn From Utopians of the Past?

Four nineteenth-century authors offered blueprints for a better world—but their progressive visions had a dark side.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on July 30, 2018
Edgar Alan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s Hatchet Jobs

The great short story writer and poet wrote many a book review.
by Mark Athitakis via Humanities on October 20, 2017
Illustrated sperm whale with blue stripes of water.

The Original 1851 Reviews of Moby Dick

There was little indication 166 years ago that the book would enter the canon of great American fiction.
by George Ripley, Henry F. Chorley, London John Bull, William Young via Literary Hub on September 8, 2017

Green House: A Brief History of “American Poetry”

Tracing its emergence of as a distinct cultural institution.
by Frank Guan via Prelude on September 22, 2014
partner

Not Just the Dog-Eared Pages

Considering a novel as a whole, rather than as the sum of its parts, was an approach favored by mid-20th-century literary critics. It was also useful for fighting book bans.
by Anthony Aycock via HNN on June 3, 2025
Illustration of characters from "The Great Gatsby."

How “The Great Gatsby” Took Over High School

The classroom staple turns a hundred.
by Alexander Manshel via The New Yorker on April 29, 2025
Mark Twain sits in thought on stone steps surrounded by nature while holding papers

Twain Dreams

The enigma of Samuel Clemens.
by John Jeremiah Sullivan via Harper’s on April 29, 2025
Science fiction landscape.

75 Years Ago, "The Martian Chronicles" Legitimized Science Fiction

On Ray Bradbury’s underappreciated classic.
by Sam Weller via Literary Hub on April 28, 2025
Mary MacLane.

“I Am Making the World My Confessor”: Mary MacLane, the Wild Woman from Butte

In 1902, a woman named Mary MacLane from Butte, Montana, became an international sensation after publishing a scandalous journal at the age of 19.
by Hunter Dukes via The Public Domain Review on April 23, 2025
Green light in a dark sky.

On My Grandfather’s Novel: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby" at 100

Reflections on the literary legacy of a timeless American novel.
by Eleanor Lanahan via Literary Hub on April 7, 2025
William and Henry James.

William and Henry James

Examining the tumultuous bond between the two brothers.
by Peter Brooks via The Paris Review on April 1, 2025
Painting by Earle Richardson titled "Employment of Negroes in Agriculture," 1934.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the Great American Novel

Most countries take their popular novelists more seriously than America has. The term “Great American Novel” was literally invented to describe this book
by Naomi Kanakia via Woman of Letters on March 11, 2025
Robert Frost.

The Many Guises of Robert Frost

Sometimes seen as the stuff of commencement addresses, his poems are hard to pin down—just like the man behind them.
by Maggie Doherty via The New Yorker on February 24, 2025
The cover of "Martian Time-Slip," featuring a man tending to a farm on Mars.

“Multiple Worlds Vying to Exist”: Philip K. Dick and Palestine

A critique of colonialism from Martian science fiction.
by Jonathan Lethem via The Paris Review on November 14, 2024
Herman Melville; illustration by Maya Chessman.

Siding with Ahab

Can we appreciate Herman Melville’s work without attributing to it schemes for the uplift of modern man?
by Christopher Benfey via New York Review of Books on July 25, 2024
Norman Mailer.

The Tough Guy Crew

Jewish masculinity and the New York intellectuals.
by Leonard Benardo via New Statesman on June 12, 2024
Misery and Fortune of Women (1930).

The Lost Abortion Plot

Power and choice in the 1930s novel.
by Julia Cooke via The Point on June 11, 2024
Illustration of a literary rejection letter.

There Is No Point in My Being Other Than Honest with You: On Toni Morrison’s Rejection Letters

Autopsies of a changing publishing industry; frustrations with readers' tastes; and sympathies for poets and authors drawn to commercially hopeless genres.
by Melina Moe via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 26, 2024
Robert Frost on his farm near Ripton, Vermont.

America’s Great Poet of Darkness

A reconsideration of Robert Frost at 150.
by Ed Simon via The Hedgehog Review on March 26, 2024
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