December 16, 2022, 9:45am This week, the eight-bedroom, six-bathroom Cotswold mansion where Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited sold to an unnamed bidder in an online auction for £3.16m, after its previous owner, Jason Blain, defaulted on a loan against the property. That’s despite the fact that prospective buyers had been warned about the current tenants, who describe
Literature
‘Nature’ is an 1836 essay by the American writer and thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82). In this essay, Emerson explores the relationship between nature and humankind, arguing that if we approach nature with a poet’s eye, and a pure spirit, we will find the wonders of nature revealed to us. You can read ‘Nature’ in
December 16, 2022, 10:28am I have questions. Now that Thomas Pynchon’s archives have a home—at Los Angeles’s Huntington Library—will we finally be given access to how he comes up with the names for his characters? Look, whatever you think of Pynchon as a novelist—and he’s certainly among the most important American writers of the last
TODAY: In 1947, Welsh author Arthur Machen dies at 84. For your holiday shopping pleasure, we’ve rounded up 50 gift books for everyone on your list, the 10 best cookbooks of the year, and 10 literary games that make great gifts. (No judgment for treating yourself.) | Lit Hub ICYMI: Here are the 10 most
December 15, 2022, 9:30am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Edan Lepucki’s Time’s Mouth forthcoming from Counterpoint in August 2023. From the bestselling author of California, comes this “enthralling saga about family secrets that grow more powerful with time, set against the magical, dangerous landscape of California.” Here’s some more about Time’s Mouth, from the publisher:
December 14, 2022, 9:30am Literary Hub is pleased to announce the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, which each year awards $10,000 and publication to a first-time, first-generation immigrant author, alternating yearly between fiction and nonfiction. The 2022 fiction prize goes to Praveen Herat for Between This World and the Next,
‘Power’ is a 1978 poem by the African-American poet Audre Lorde (1934-92), published in her collection The Black Unicorn. Lorde was a self-described ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.’ In ‘Power’, Lorde explores racial injustice, and in particular, racial violence against children, and discusses how Black writers such as herself should respond to it. You can
December 14, 2022, 12:34pm In 1982, Scott Rice, an English professor at San Jose State University, founded the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest—in which entrants are challenged “to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst novel never written”—named, of course, after Edward Bulwer-Lytton, best known for his purple prose and the iconic opening line “it was
December 13, 2022, 9:54am In general, I have zero interest in content by and about Trump or his administration, but the latest money grab disguised as a book caught my attention because of the high potential for celebrities being extremely embarrassed. According to CNN, the book, which will reportedly be released next year, will “showcas[e]
December 13, 2022, 10:19am What the hell are we doing? All the best things are shutting down and people are out here using computers to make children’s books? Not to get too Jeff Goldblum on you, but just because you build a tool to do something doesn’t make it interesting or worthy. To wit, a
We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it. Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed
What are the most important quotations in Shirley Jackson’s well-known 1948 short story ‘The Lottery’? This deeply unsettling story about a village which annually selects a blood sacrifice from its inhabitants in the hope of bringing about a good harvest is widely studied and discussed, but it deals with some big ideas and moral questions.
TODAY: In 1821, Gustave Flaubert is born. “No matter how long ago slavery might seem, it is always disquietingly close to us, both in time and memory.” Gabrielle Bellot on the new Kindred adaptation and Octavia Butler’s fear of historical amnesia. | Lit Hub Film & TV Ken Chen on the genius of Annie
Rejoice, Bellowheads: on December 12th, PBS is premiering the first-ever major documentary on Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner Saul Bellow. Directed by Asaf Galay and featuring rare archival footage and interviews with Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, and others, American Masters: The Adventures of Saul Bellow “traces Bellow’s rise to eminence and examines his many identities:
We’ve come to the end of another bountiful literary year, and for all of us review rabbits here at Book Marks, that can mean only one thing: basic math, and lots of it. Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be calculating and revealing the most critically-acclaimed
TODAY: In 1793, the inaugural issue of New York City’s first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is published. Also on Lit Hub: On the metaphors of mathematical models • When a medical emergency reveals a long-hidden history of cancer • Read from Maria Jose Ferrada’s newly translated novel, How to Turn Into a Bird (tr. Elizabeth Bryer)
TODAY: In 1907, Rudyard Kipling becomes the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. Drumroll, please: it’s our 38 favorite books of 2022! | Lit Hub Reading Lists “She writes her way to hope.” Jesmyn Ward on the optimistic work of Octavia Butler. | Lit Hub Criticism Leila Philip elucidates the sacred weirdness (and evolutionary puzzle) of the
From essays to interviews, excerpts to blog posts, reading lists to poems, we publish around 500 pieces a month at Lit Hub. And while we are proud of all of the 6,000+ pieces we’ve shared in 2022, we do have our personal favorites. Below are some of the features we loved best on Lit Hub