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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, as a photograph and a negative.

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
Covers of editions of "The Best American Poetry."

Good Riddance To ‘The Best American Poetry’

As "The Best American Poetry" anthology ends after nearly forty years, the contradictions of its influence stand out.
by Nick Sturm via Defector on September 30, 2025
Dorothy Parker at work writing

Pretty Garrotte: Why We Need Dorothy Parker

While she always insisted that she wasn’t a ‘real’ critic, Dorothy Parker is more astute than most on matters of style.
by Kasia Boddy via London Review of Books on September 3, 2025
Collage of photos of Lionel Trilling.

Lionel Trilling and the Limits of Crisis-Thought

Lionel Trilling defends humanism amid crisis culture, warning that obsessing over evil can erode the self and our capacity for moral and creative agency.
by Sam Gee via The Hedgehog Review on September 3, 2025
Illustration of Jack Kerouac and his editor Malcolm Crowley with the manuscript "On the Road."

Scrolling Through

Jack Kerouac, Malcolm Cowley, and the difficult birth of "On the Road."
by Gerald Howard via The American Scholar on September 2, 2025
James Baldwin

The Many Lives of James Baldwin

A new biography shows that his life was more complex than his viral fame suggests.
by John Livesey via Jacobin on August 17, 2025
James Baldwin and Lucien Happersberger in bed.

The Lives and Loves of James Baldwin

Once dismissed as passé, since recast as a secular saint, Baldwin’s true message remains more unsettling than readers in either camp recognize.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on August 11, 2025
Paper in a typewriter, with the words "the end" just typed.

Words Left Behind: The Quandary of Posthumous Publishing

Joan Didion’s journal entries posthumously has sparked a wider ethical debate: Is it acceptable to publish a writer’s unfinished work after their death?
by Selina Alipour Tabrizi via The Saturday Evening Post on August 4, 2025
F. Scott Fitzgerald

‘The Great Gatsby’ at One Hundred

The neglected Catholic overtones of an American classic.
by Paul Baumann via Commonweal on July 15, 2025
Lionel Trilling photographed by Walker Evans in the 1950s.

Colony, Aviary and Zoo: New York Intellectuals

A new book examines the aggressive masculinity that the editors of the Partisan Review brought to their art and literary criticism.
by David Denby via London Review of Books on July 3, 2025
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
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