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The title page of Life and confession of Ann Walters, the female murderess.
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How “Female Fiends” Challenged Victorian Ideals

At a time when questions about women's rights in marriage roiled society, women readers took to the pages of cheap books about husband-murdering wives.

What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About

In the literature of pestilence, the greatest threat isn’t the loss of human life but the loss of what makes us human.
A photo of Nelson Bellamy next to a photo of a boardwalk full of people sunbathing and wading.

“The Splendor of Our Public and Common Life”

Edward Bellamy's utopia influenced a generation of urban planners.
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.
Protester at an "America First" rally.

The Great-Granddaddy of White Nationalism

Thomas Dixon’s racist discourse lurks in American politics and society even today.
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Pulp Fiction Helped Define American Lesbianism

In the 50s and 60s, steamy novels about lesbian relationships, marketed to men, gave closeted women needed representation.
The secret message in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold Bug"

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” (1843)

Poe’s story of a treasure hunt, revealing the fantastical writer’s hyper-rational penchant for cracking codes.
Painting of people examining a globe that depicts California as an island.

California, an Island?

Meet cartography's most persistent mistake.
Book cover of Upton Sinclair's book, featuring text and his profile

Mankind, Unite!

How Upton Sinclair’s 1934 run for governor of California inspired a cult.

A Book of Necessary, Speculative Narratives for the Anonymous Black Women of History

Unearthing the beauty in the wayward, the fiction in the facts, and the thriving existence in the face of a blanked out history.

It's Time to Stop Talking About a 'National Divorce'

The right's eagerness for a "peaceful separation" of the nation echoes pieces of race war fiction.
Book cover of the novel Trinity, depicting a man in a business suit casting a long shadow.

On Oppenheimer

A conversation with Louisa Hall about her novel, “Trinity.”

Literary Hoaxes and the Ethics of Authorship

What happens when we find out writers aren't who they said they were.
Film still of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

The Contested Legacy of Atticus Finch

Lee’s beloved father figure was a talking point during the Kavanaugh hearings and is now coming to Broadway. Is he still a hero?

What War of the Worlds Did

The uncanny realism of Orson Welles’s radio play crystallised a fear of communication technology that haunts us today.

How Horror Changed After WWI

The war created a new world, an alternate reality distinct from what most people before 1914 expected their lives to be.

History for a Post-Fact America

A review of Jill Lepore's new book, which she has called the most ambitious single-volume American history written in generations.
Film still of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.

How Reconsidering Atticus Finch Makes Us Reconsider America

A new book offers lessons drawn from Harper Lee's ambivalent treatment of this iconic character.

This 60-Year-Old Novel About Sexual Harassment Was Ahead Of Its Time

"The Best of Everything" outlined the dynamics and the costs of sexual harassment, decades before anyone talked openly about it.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Librarians without Chests: A Response to the ALSC’s Denigration of Laura Ingalls Wilder

A network of professional librarians seeks to destroy a beloved literary heroine and malign her creator.

New York City, the Perfect Setting for a Fictional Cold War Strike

On Collier’s 1950 cover story, “Hiroshima, USA: Can Anything Be Done About It?”

We’re the Good Guys, Right?

Marvel's heroes are back again, but with little of the subversive aura that once surrounded them.
John le Carre

Coming in from the Cold

On spy fiction.
Willa Cather

Willa Cather, Pioneer

Willa Cather's life and work broke with the standards of her time.

Was the Real Lone Ranger a Black Man?

The amazing true story of Bass Reeves, the formerly enslaved man who patrolled the Wild West.
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At Home With Ursula Le Guin

Her novels featured dragons and wizards, but they were also deeply grounded in indigenous American ways of thought.

The Impossibility of Knowing Mark Twain

Even Twain's own autobiography cannot reveal the whole truth of the literary legend.

Arthur Mervin, Bankrupt

An 18th-century novel explores how American society handles capitalism's collateral damage — and who deserves a second chance.
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.

Brian Tochterman on the 'Summer of Hell'

What E.B. White, Mickey Spillane, Death Wish, hip-hop, and the “Summer of Hell” have in common.

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