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Edgar Allan Poe

On Edgar Allan Poe

Crypts, entombments, physical morbidity: these nightmares are prominent in Poe’s tales, a fictional world in which the word that recurs most crucially is horror.
by Marilynne Robinson via New York Review of Books on January 5, 2015

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
Pearl Curran

Ghostwriter and Ghost: The Strange Case of Pearl Curran & Patience Worth

In early 20th-century St. Louis, Pearl Curran claimed to have conjured a long-dead New England Puritan named Patience Worth through a Ouija board.
by Ed Simon via The Public Domain Review on September 17, 2014
Eleanor Kirk

How to Pitch a Magazine (in 1888)

Eleanor Kirk's guide offered a way to break into the boys’ club of publishing.
by Paul Collins via The New Yorker on September 4, 2014

Elizabeth Bisland’s Race Around the World

The American journalist propelled into the limelight when she went head-to-head with Nellie Bly on a race around the world.
by Matthew Goodman via The Public Domain Review on October 6, 2013
Illustration of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur writing.

The American Beginning

The dark side of Crèvecoeur's "Letters from an American Farmer."
by Alan Taylor via The New Republic on July 19, 2013
Gen. Lew Wallace, circa 1861.

The Incredible Life of Lew Wallace, Civil War General and Author of Ben-Hur

The incredible story of how a disgraced Civil War general became one of the best-selling novelists in American history.
by John Swansburg via Slate on March 26, 2013
Portrait of Ambrose Bierce with skull

One of America's Best

Ambrose Bierce deviated from the refined eeriness of English-style ghost stories for his haunting descriptions of fateful coincidence and horrific revelation.
by Michael Dirda via New York Review of Books on May 10, 2012

How Barry Levinson’s Diner Changed Cinema, 30 Years Later

With Diner, Barry Levinson turned a film about nothing into a male-bonding classic, launched careers, and spawned hits from Seinfeld to The Office.
by S. L. Price via HWD on February 10, 2012
Audubon painting of an eagle with a rabbit in its talons.

John James Audubon, the American "Hunter-Naturalist"

Audubon drew the attention of the American people to the richness and diversity of nature, helping them see it in national and environmental terms.
by Gregory H. Nobles via Commonplace on January 1, 2012
Black and white photo of John Muir sitting on a rock

John Muir's Literary Science

The writings of the Scottish-born American naturalist John Muir are known for their scientific acumen as well as for their rhapsodic flights.
by Terry Gifford via The Public Domain Review on June 9, 2011
Harriet Beecher Stowe imagining her characters.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and the Art of Persuasion

Stowe’s novel shifted public opinion about slavery so dramatically that it has often been credited with fuelling the war that destroyed the institution.
by Annette Gordon-Reed via The New Yorker on June 6, 2011
Illustrated cover of the "Secret Garden"

100 Years of The Secret Garden

Frances Hodgson Burnett's biographer considers her life and how personal tragedy underpinned the creation of her most famous work.
by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina via The Public Domain Review on March 8, 2011
Drawings of George Washington

His Highness

George Washington scales new heights.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on September 20, 2010
Joseph Dennie.

Was the Federalist Press Staid and Apolitical?

Quite the contrary. They used rhetoric to build a partisan community, and realized that parties needed to create and market identities, not simply agendas.
by Catherine O'Donnell Kaplan via Commonplace on October 1, 2008
Photograph of Jack Kerouac looking into a shop window, by Allen Ginsberg.

Drive, Jack Kerouac Wrote

"On the Road" is a sad and somewhat self-consciously lyrical story about loneliness, insecurity, and failure. It’s also a story about guys who want to be with other guys.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on September 24, 2007

Nooks and Corners of Old New York (1899)

A detailed guide to the old stories and landscapes of New York City, published in the last year of the 19th century.
by Charles Hemstreet via The Public Domain Review on July 18, 2007

Phillis Wheatley: an Eighteenth-Century Genius in Bondage

Vincent Carretta takes a look at the remarkable life of the first ever African-American woman to be published.
by Vincent Carretta via The Public Domain Review on December 2, 2006
John Harvard statue by Daniel Chester French.

Reading Puritans and the Bard

Without the bawdy world of Falstaff and Prince Hal and of Shakespeare’s jesters, there would have been nothing for those dissenting Puritans to dissent from.
by Mark A. Peterson via Commonplace on October 1, 2006
Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln's Great Depression

Abraham Lincoln fought clinical depression all his life. But what would today be treated as a "character issue" gave Lincoln the tools to save the nation.
by Joshua Wolf Shenk via The Atlantic on October 1, 2005
James Baldwin

The Making and Unmaking of James Baldwin

On the private and public lives of the author of “The Fire Next Time” and “Giovanni’s Room.”
by Hilton Als via The New Yorker on February 9, 1998
Trumbull painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Dusting Off the Declaration

The Declaration of Independence seems to Pauline Maier to be "peculiarly unsuited" for the role that it eventually came to play in America.
by Gordon S. Wood via New York Review of Books on August 14, 1997
Harrison Gray Otis in superimposed over newspapers and palm trees.

Letter from Los Angeles

The history of the L.A. Times.
by Joan Didion via The New Yorker on February 18, 1990
Harper Lee

Harper Lee's Only Recorded Interview About 'To Kill A Mockingbird' [AUDIO]

In 1964, Harper Lee talked with WQXR host Roy Newquist for an interview in New York.
via WQXR on January 1, 1964
Map of Europe with title "Franklina C. Gray: The Grand Tour"

Franklina C. Gray: The Grand Tour

In the late 19th Century, tourism to Europe boomed because wealthy Americans could travel more quickly and safely than ever before on railroads and steamships.
via Camron Stanford House
A policeman stoops down next to a roulette wheel and writes on a clipboard.

The Engines and Empires of New York City Gambling

As plans are laid for a new casino, one can trace, through four figures, a history of rivalry and excess, rife with collisions of character and crime.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker 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
Mugshot of a man staring blandly into the camera.

What I Inherited from My Criminal Great-Grandparents

In working through the Winter case files, I often felt pinpricks of déjà vu: an exact turn of phrase, an absurdly specific expenditure.
by Jessica Winter via The New Yorker on July 14, 2025
A painting of a waterfall in the Rocky Mountains.

America the Beautiful

The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times.
by Lincoln Caplan via The American Scholar on July 4, 2025
Engraving of Founding Fathers reading the Declaration of Independence while onlookers rally.

Does America Have a Founding Philosophy?

It depends on how you read the Declaration’s “self-evident” truths.
by James R. Stoner, Jr. via Modern Age on July 1, 2025
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