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Cinderella Tries on the Slipper, by Millikin and Lawley, c. 1890.
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If the Slipper Doesn’t Fit

A scorched shoe is a crucial part of Zelda Fitzgerald’s modern mythology. But there’s no proof it existed.
by Gabby Kiser via HNN on September 9, 2025
James Baldwin by Joe Ciardiello.

James Baldwin’s Radical Politics of Love

The radical lives of James Baldwin.
by Elias Rodriques via The Nation on September 9, 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
Circles in a Circle, by Wassily Kandinsky, 1923.

The Draft of Time

On Ralph Waldo Emerson, his childhood in Boston, and his thoughts on mortality.
by James Marcus via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 2, 2025
Spooking the Censors

Spooking the Censors

In the 1950s, the CIA funded efforts to smuggle great works of literature into the Eastern Bloc.
by Michael O'Donnell via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 13, 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
The four Harper Brothers, founders of the namesake publishing giant.
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The 200 Year History of American Virtue Capitalism

Despite the recent backlash against DEI, there is a longstanding tradition of virtue capitalism in the United States.
by Joseph P. Slaughter via Made By History on July 23, 2025
Painting of the Bay of San Francisco, by Eduard Hildebrandt.

Mark Twain, the Californian

In 1864 San Francisco, Twain found hardship, Bohemia, and his voice—transforming from local reporter to rising literary force.
by Ben Tarnoff via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 4, 2025
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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
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
Jack Clayton, The Great Gatsby, 1974.

America the Beautiful

One hundred years ago, "The Great Gatsby" was first published. It remains one of the books that almost every literate American has read.
by John Pistelli via The Metropolitan Review on April 7, 2025
Shulamith Firestone, 1997.

When the Battle's Lost and Won

Shulamith Firestone and the burdens of prophecy.
by Audrey Wollen via Harper’s on March 28, 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
Cartoon of well-dressed arm holding a lit match

The Gilded Age Never Ended

Plutocrats, anarchists, and what Henry James grasped about the romance of revolution.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on February 24, 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
Front cover of the 1940 issue Anvil by John C. Rogers showing a muscular man in bold red strokes.

Anvil, the Forgotten Magazine of Heartland Marxism

Anvil's popular vision for a multiracial socialism in the heart of the US could hardly be more urgent today.
by Marc Blanc via Jacobin on February 23, 2025
Three covers of the New Yorker, with The New Yorker's logo, a highbrow man in a tophat and monocle, super-imposed over them.

The New Yorker and the American Voice

Tales of the city and beyond.
by Ed Simon via The Hedgehog Review on February 19, 2025
Three identical pictures of the explosion of an atomic bomb with different coloring.

How Literature Predicted and Portrayed the Atom Bomb

On Pierrepoint B. Noyes, H.G. Wells, and the “Superweapons” of early science-fiction.
by Dorian Lynskey via Literary Hub on January 28, 2025
Zora Neale Hurston laughing and holding a cigarette.

Go Hard or Go Home

On folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who passed away sixty-five years ago today.
by Huda Hassan via Mother, Loosen My Tongue on January 28, 2025
Zora Neale Hurston.

Why Zora Neale Hurston Was Obsessed with the Jews

Her long-unpublished novel was the culmination of a years-long fascination. What does it reveal about her fraught views on civil rights?
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on January 13, 2025
James Baldwin at work on his novel “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone," and smoking.

Refinding James Baldwin

A fascinating new exhibit focuses on Baldwin’s years in Turkey, the country that, in his words, saved his life.
by Doreen St. Félix via The New Yorker on December 28, 2024
Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman: The Original Substacker

Publishing needs his democratic spirit.
by Sam Kahn via UnHerd on December 13, 2024
Burgundy leather book cover with "Published By The Author" written in gold.
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Self-Publishing and the Black American Narrative

"Published by the Author" explores the resourcefulness of Black writers of the nineteenth century.
by Tim Brinkhof, Bryan Sinche via JSTOR Daily on December 11, 2024
A painting of a group of Puritans walking through a snowy forest, with the men carrying rifles.

The Puritans Were Book Banners, But They Weren’t Sexless Sourpusses

From early New England to the present day, censors have acted out of fear, not prudishness.
by Peter C. Mancall via Zócalo Public Square on November 25, 2024
William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison.

What the Novels of William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison Reveal About the Soul of America

The postwar moment of a distinctive new American novel—Nabokov’s "Lolita"— is also the moment in which William Faulkner finally gained recognition.
by Edwin Frank via Literary Hub on November 19, 2024
Fire (the Magazine) cover with bold words fire in red and other visual illustrations.

A Radical Black Magazine From the Harlem Renaissance Was Ahead of Its Time

Fire!! was a pathbreaking showcase for Black artists and writers “ready to emotionally serve a new day and a new generation.”
by Jon Key via Hammer & Hope on November 19, 2024
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
The famous photo of the eyes from The Great Gatsby.

How “The Great Gatsby” Changed the Landscape of New York City

On Robert Moses, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the culture of environmental waste.
by John Marsh via Monthly Review on November 13, 2024
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