‘A Description of the Morning’ is a 1709 poem by the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). Published in The Tatler, Swift’s poem displays his keen eye for contemporary detail as he satirises elements of early eighteenth-century London. ‘A Description of the Morning’ is written in heroic couplets: iambic pentameter rhyming couplets. The couplets are closed,
Literature
August 24, 2022, 11:41am When the Lit Hub staff worked out of an office, some among us were very fond of harmless workplace pranks. (Some day we’ll publish the oral history of the time we replaced the first page of Fleur Jaeggy’s Sweet Days of Discipline with the first page of a Lit Hub editor’s
August 23, 2022, 11:58am For the second year, the nation (of TikTok users and the middle-aged journalists who write about them) has been gripped by the phenomenon that is sorority rush week at the University of Alabama. As a middle-aged person who is not TikTok literate but who nevertheless enjoys social phenomena, I’ve read a
August 23, 2022, 1:41pm As mass hysteria continues to target American students’ access to information in books, there’s some particularly disheartening news coming out of Oklahoma this week. Wendy Suares, an anchor at KOKH FOX 25, reported on Twitter that a teacher at Norman High School in Norman, Oklahoma, was fired for speaking to students
August 22, 2022, 3:42pm What could one say about Dorothy Parker that hasn’t already been said, especially here at Literary Hub dot com? She was a revered critic and essayist, known for her witty one-liners. She inspired Nora Ephron. She worked on the script for It’s a Wonderful Life. She famously hated Winnie-the-Pooh. (And in one
Postmodernism came to prominence in the second half of the twentieth century. As the name suggests, postmodernism developed out of modernism: it came after modernism, both in the sense that it chronologically followed it, and in the sense of extending, and to some extent critiquing, the aims and attitudes of modernism. Characteristics of postmodern fiction
August 22, 2022, 10:50am Chew on this, Armie Hammer. After the success of 2017’s Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino and Timothée Chalamet have reunited for a new literary adaptation—this time without Hammer, despite the fact that the project is a coming-of-age story about teenage cannibals in love. Yes, seriously. I know cannibalism is
As host of the Keen On show, I get to ask my smart guests dumb questions. The smarter the guest sometimes, I confess, the dumber the question. This week, for example, I couldn’t resist asking the classically dumb question about the future to Brad Feld, a particularly prescient venture capitalist and start-up tech author. How
In 1991, two years after he had started to write the Sandman graphic novels, Neil Gaiman received the first of many offers to adapt his curious comics to the screen. In some ways, this was an early testament to the unexpected power of Gaiman’s series, given the fact that The Sandman was a kind of
TODAY: In 1687, Samuel Richardson, author of Pamela, a book many consider the first modern English novel, is born. “She could never be anything but herself, and as herself she was absolutely riveting on-screen.” Alice Sedgwick Wohl on Edie Sedgwick’s first movies with Andy Warhol. | Lit Hub Biography Beth Macy, author of Dopesick,
TODAY: In 1881, British-born American poet Edgar Albert Guest is born. Dana Milbank considers the Republican Party’s embrace of political violence before January 6th—including Sarah Palin’s call to arms and crosshairs image over Gabby Giffords’s district. | Lit Hub Politics “I am a performer and a monk.” Sidik Fofano on being a shy debut author. | Lit Hub Writing
August 19, 2022, 9:30am Literary Hub is pleased to reveal the cover for Joy Castro’s new novel One Brilliant Flame, which will be published by Lake Union in January. Here’s how the publisher describes the book: Key West, 1886. The booming cigar industry makes it the most prosperous city in Florida. As a rebel base
Eric Arthur Blair (1903-50), who is better-known to the world as George Orwell, was one of the leading English essayists of the first half of the twentieth century, writing about everything from the Spanish Civil War to the ideal pub to how to make a perfect cup of tea. Of course, George Orwell is also
August 19, 2022, 11:25am Former Manchester United soccer star Ryan Giggs’s trial for alleged domestic abuse has revealed many things—mainly that he was an awful, abusive, and toxic boyfriend to Kate Greville. But he may* also be responsible for the worst love poem ever written (which was read aloud during the trial). Presented without comment.
August 18, 2022, 12:25pm TEGAN AND SARA TRAILER DROP, TEGAN AND SARA TRAILER DROP—this is not a drill! If you clicked on this, you’re probably well aware that the beloved sister indie pop duo published a memoir in 2019 called High School. Amazon Freevee (boo) is adapting it into a TV show (yay) starring Railey and
‘Breakfast’ is a short story by John Steinbeck (1902-68), the shortest piece to be included in his collection The Long Valley. The story first appeared in The Pacific Weekly in 1936 before being reprinted in The Long Valley two years later. Although it’s often classified as a short story, ‘Breakfast’ had its origins in notes
August 18, 2022, 1:30pm If you’re unfamiliar with the style of Daily Mail headlines, you’re living a more honorable life than I, and I applaud you. For those who recognize the truly bananas way that the paper of ill-record titles its celebrity stories, I present to you… Shakespeare plays, if the headline writers at the
August 17, 2022, 3:26pm Earlier this week, I was having a perfectly normal dinner with some friends who were in town, and I can’t remember how we got on this topic, but we ended up spending a good 30 minutes trying to track down the name of a middle grade/young adult book from our youth.