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Photo of Jack Kerouac, 1956

Jack Kerouac’s Journey

For "On the Road"’s author, it was a struggle to write, then a struggle to live with its fame. “My work is found, my life is lost,” he wrote.
by Joyce Johnson via New York Review of Books on March 2, 2022
Undated photograph by “Miss Carter” of William James in a séance with the medium Mrs. Walden.

“Pajamas from Spirit Land”: Searching for William James

After the passing of William James, mediums across the US began receiving messages from the late Harvard professor.
by Alicia Puglionesi via The Public Domain Review on February 23, 2022
Ernest Hemingway and his wife Mary Welsh.

For Whom The Bell Tolls

Close your eyes and imagine you’re married to Ernest Hemingway. Now, imagine it twice as bad, and you’ll be approaching the life story of Mary Welsh Hemingway.
by Anne Margaret Daniel via The Spectator on February 20, 2022
Zora Neale Hurston browsing books at a book fair, looking at a book called "American Stuff."

The Zora Neale Hurston We Don’t Talk About

In the new nonfiction collection “You Don’t Know Us Negroes,” what emerges is a writer who mastered a Black idiom but seldom championed race pride.
by Lauren Michele Jackson via The New Yorker on February 14, 2022
Handwritten magazine index

‘Index, A History of the’ Review: List-O-Mania

At the back of the book, the index provides a space for reference—and sometimes revenge.
by Ben Yagoda via The Wall Street Journal on February 11, 2022
Illustration of two ghostly women

The Haunted World of Edith Wharton

Whether exploring the dread of everyday life or the horrors of the occult, her ghost tales documented a nation haunted by isolation, class, and despair.
by Krithika Varagur via The Nation on February 8, 2022
Vintage drawing of a Victorian-era drugstore

Was Edgar Allan Poe a Habitual Opium User?

While Poe was likely using opium, the efforts to keep him quiet suggest that he was also drinking.
by Elizabeth Kelly Gray via Commonplace on February 7, 2022
Painting of a Puritan family sitting around a table with books.

Read More Puritan Poetry

Coming to love Puritan poetry is an odd aesthetic journey. It's the sort of thing you expect people partial to bowties and gin gimlets to get involved with.
by Ed Simon via The Millions on February 4, 2022
Profile photograph of Margaret Wise Brown.

The Radical Woman Behind “Goodnight Moon”

Margaret Wise Brown constantly pushed boundaries—in her life and in her art.
by Anna E. Holmes via The New Yorker on January 27, 2022
original

Best History Writing of 2021

Bunk's American History Top 40.
by Tony Field on January 26, 2022
Black and white photo of a beach with a wooden row boat beached on the shore.

The Pandemic Has Given Us a Bad Case of Narrative Vertigo; Literature Can Help

In the work of writers like W.B. Yeats and Virginia Woolf, we can find new ways to tell our own stories.
by Elizabeth Outka via Washington Post on January 25, 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
William Faulkner in front of bookshelf

William Faulkner’s Tragic Vision

In Yoknapatawpha County, the past never speaks with a single voice.
by Jonathan Clarke via City Journal on January 4, 2022
Illustration of Louise Fitzhugh smiling and holding journal.

The Tragic Misfit Behind “Harriet the Spy”

The girl sleuth, now the star of a TV show, has been eased into the canon. In the process, she’s shed the politics that motivated her creation.
by Rebecca Panovka via The New Yorker on December 9, 2021
William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown, Wildcat Banker

How a story told by a fugitive from slavery became a parable of American banking gone bad.
by Ross Bullen via The Public Domain Review on November 24, 2021
Pen sketch of Robert Frost.

Frost at Midnight

A new volume of Robert Frost’s letters finds him at the height of his artistic powers while suffering an almost unimaginable series of losses.
by Dan Chiasson via New York Review of Books on November 24, 2021
The cover of the book "The Secret of Life"

Heels: A New Account of the Double Helix

How Rosalind Franklin, the crystallographer whose data were crucial to solving the structure of DNA, was written out of the story of scientific discovery.
by Nathaniel Comfort via Los Angeles Review of Books on October 26, 2021
Illustration of a ghost, resembling a woman figure.

Edith Wharton’s Bewitching, Long-Lost Ghost Stories

A reissued collection, long out of print, revives the author’s masterly stories of horror and unease.
by Anna Russell via The New Yorker on October 24, 2021
Left: Longfellow in His Study, by Worth Brehm, c. 1912. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Right: Dante Meditating on “The Divine Comedy”, by Jean-Jacques Feuchère, 1843.

As Far From Heaven as Possible

How Henry Wadsworth Longfellow interpreted Reconstruction by translating Dante.
by Ed Simon via Lapham’s Quarterly on October 4, 2021
Illustration of Edgar Allen Poe looking out window at raven, painted by Eduard Manet

Edgar Allan Poe Needs a Friend

Revisiting the relationships of “a man who never smiled.”
by Matthew Redmond via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 7, 2021

In the Dead Archives

The comment section of a Grateful Dead concert archive offers a sometimes-dark glimpse into a dedicated fan community.
by Max Abelson via n+1 on August 20, 2021
Glossographia title page

Why is the English Spelling System so Weird and Inconsistent?

Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology.
by Arika Okrent via Aeon on July 26, 2021
A firefighting tanker drops retardant over the Grandview Fire
partner

Drought-Related Crises Are Afflicting Millions. Desert Dwellers Can Offer Advice.

If we accept that we live in a desert nation, we can glean insights about how to live with aridity.
by C. J. Alvarez, Patricia Nelson Limerick via Made By History on July 19, 2021
A church building situated amongst mountains.

Thoreau In Good Faith

A literary examination of Henry David Thoreau's life and legacy today.
by Caleb Smith via Public Books on July 19, 2021
Drawing of ailing person in bed with another person sitting in chair facing them

How Early Americans Narrated Disease

Early Americans coped with disease through narratives that found divine providence and mercy in suffering.
by Philippa Koch via Zócalo Public Square on July 6, 2021
The writer (seen here in a picture from the eighteen-eighties) hid his own life story.

Are All Short Stories O. Henry Stories?

The writer’s signature style of ending—a final, thrilling note—has the touch of magic that distinguishes the form at its best.
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on June 28, 2021
A diagram of the phases of the Moon.

Man-Bat and Raven: Poe on the Moon

A new book recovers the reputation Poe had in his own lifetime of being a cross between a science writer, a poet, and a man of letters.
by Mike Jay via London Review of Books on June 24, 2021
Abstract composition by Valentijn Edgar Van Uytvanck, 1918

Still Farther South

In 1838, as the U.S. began its Exploring Expedition to the South Seas, Edgar Allan Poe published a novel that masqueraded as a travelogue.
by John Tresch via The Public Domain Review on June 16, 2021
Nelson Algren sititing under a bridge

When the Government Supported Writers

Government support created jobs, built trust, and invigorated American literature. We should try it again.
by Max Holleran via The New Republic on June 15, 2021
Old cars piled up under a bridge overpass.

New York: The Invention of an Imaginary City

How nostalgic fantasies about the “authentic” New York City obscure the real-world place.
by Yasmin Nair via Current Affairs on June 13, 2021
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