April 26, 2021, 3:55pm George Orwell probably hasn’t stopped spinning in his grave since that Apple Macintosh commercial came out in 1984. You know, the one with the lady in red gym shorts who throws a big old hammer at Big Brother, at which point we are told that 1984 won’t be like “1984” if
Literature
TODAY: In 1888, screenwriter and author Anita Loos, best known for her 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, is born. “Hitchcock alone bears responsibility for his acts of predation, though his behavior was thoroughly facilitated and normalized by the culture.” Edward White looks at the director’s treatment of women. | Lit Hub Film Your week
The symbolism of the phoenix ought to be a straightforward matter. There are two things most people know about the phoenix: that it’s a mythical bird, no more real than dragons or unicorns; and that it’s famous for rising from the ashes of its own funeral pyre, symbolising resurrection. However, there are a number of
April 23, 2021, 12:08pm Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery—here’s some good Friday news: in a new study, a team from UT Austin has encoded a quote from Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park on a small plastic molecule. The goal of the study was to test the viability of plastics as an efficient data-storing
April 23, 2021, 12:24pm Poetry-heads rejoice, and then leap into action: a handwritten copy of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is currently up for auction through Lion Heart Autographs. The copy is not the original manuscript of the poem, but is nevertheless quite rare; David Lowenherz, president of Lion Heart Autographs,
‘The Birthmark’ is a short story by the nineteenth-century American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in 1843. Although not as well-known as ‘Young Goodman Brown’ or ‘The Minister’s Black Veil’, ‘The Birthmark’ is an intriguing tale which, like those more famous stories, contains ambiguous symbolism within its straightforward plot. You can read ‘The Birthmark’ here
TODAY: In 1967, S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders is published by Viking. “I will get my second vaccination in a few weeks and today I wondered if I should practice wearing shoes with heels again.” Ada Limón on preparing the body for a reopened world. | Lit Hub Why does walking help us think? Jeremy DeSilva looks to great writers,
April 23, 2021, 12:45pm Want to read what everyone else is reading? MarketWatch reports that in honor of World Book Day, Amazon has released a list of their 50 overall bestselling books in the U.S. (at least in the 27 years since their launch in 1994). Of course, not everyone buys their books on Amazon
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses one of the most famous lines from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety’: these words are among the most well-known and oft-quoted from William Shakespeare’s late tragedy, Antony and Cleopatra, about the love affair between
April 23, 2021, 1:03pm Exciting news: Tibet’s ancient books protection center has uploaded over twenty thousand folios of rare, ancient books and documents to the Tibet Library’s official website. Users are able to search, copy and download all documents for free. This is a major step forward for archive accessibility—for researchers, history enthusiasts, and simply
TODAY: In 1896, English novelist Margaret Kennedy is born. Kate Aronoff draws a line from the Green New Deal back to FDR’s New Deal, which “reimagined what the US government could do, what it was for, and who it served.” | Lit Hub Politics “The things that mark you will come out in your work;
One of the most important and influential American writers of the nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) was a descendant of John Hathorne, one of the judges at the Salem witch trials of 1692. And New England Puritanism is very much at the heart of his work. He’s regarded by many critics as the first major
April 22, 2021, 2:16pm If you’ve been seeing headlines this week that say things like “Jane Austen canceled for drinking tea” and “Woke Madness! Jane Austen under historical interrogation,” and are a.) worried or b.) simply confused, let me clear things up: Jane Austen has not been canceled for drinking tea, and there is no
The following is excerpted from Fiona Mozley’s latest novel, Hot Stew, about wealth and inheritance, gender and power, and the things women must do to survive in an unjust world. Mozley was born in East London and raised in York, in the North of England. She studied history at Cambridge and then lived in Buenos
Of all of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales for children, ‘The Selfish Giant’ has the strongest Christian symbolism and is clearly meant to be read and analysed as an allegory for Christian love. In this post, we’ll take a closer look at the story and its meaning and imagery. You can read ‘The Selfish Giant’ here
In The Phantom Tollbooth, Milo—the child-hero driving through a world of word and number play—accidentally enters a low, dull place. The world loses all its color, everything becoming “grayer and monotonous.” He feels drowsy, his car won’t move, and finally he comes to a dead stop. He has strayed into this land of stasis by
There is a famous anecdote about Lewis Carroll and Queen Victoria: Victoria enjoyed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) so much that she requested a first edition of Carroll’s next book. Carroll duly sent her a copy of the next book he published – a mathematical work with the exciting title An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.
For some, home is the house they grew up in. For others, it’s a country or a nation. Some find it in family, or in the arms of a lover, while others believe it’s where we go when we die. Some say home is the “pale blue dot” that is our planet, and still others