May 20, 2021, 12:55pm Exciting news—or dispiriting news for would-be collectors: a Columbia Law School textbook once owned by late Supreme Court justice and legal titan Ruth Bader Ginsberg sold yesterday to an anonymous bidder for $18,125 in Heritage Auctions’ Manuscripts Auction. The textbook in question, The French Legal System: An Introduction to Civil Law
Literature
‘My Country Right or Left’ is a 1940 essay by George Orwell, in which he reflects on his childhood memories of the First World War and outlines why he supports the Second World War, which had broken out the year before. However, as with many of Orwell’s essays, he makes some surprising statements in the
May 19, 2021, 4:01pm Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the 1619 Project and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur fellowship, has been hired for a five-year term as a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media—despite having been pursued by the school for its Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism,
May 19, 2021, 12:52pm Today, it was announced that Shola von Reinhold and Jacaranda Books have won the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, which rewards outstanding literary fiction published by UK- and Ireland-based presses with no more than five full-time employees. Von Reinhold’s debut novel Lote, for which von Reinhold and Jacaranda Books
Probably the most famous legend to feature a love potion, the story of Tristan and Isolde (or Iseult, as her name is rendered in some versions of the myth) is one of the most celebrated Celtic legends along with the stories of King Arthur. Indeed, Tristan and Isolde are sometimes associated with the Arthurian legend,
May 18, 2021, 12:44pm What do we talk about when we talk about limericks? When we consider the limerick, we might think of our elementary school poetry unit, or Edward Lear, who popularized the form in the 19th century with A Book of Nonsense, or the ever-popular man from Nantucket. But someone we don’t think
May 18, 2021, 1:07pm Booksellers at Los Angeles’s indie bookstore Skylight Books announced today that they have unionized. The Skylight Bookseller Union will be affiliated with the over-700,000-member Communications Workers of America Union. Wrote the Skylight Bookseller Union on Instagram, “The booksellers of Skylight Books have unionized! In honor of our beloved coworker Ian Irizarry,
May 18, 2021, 1:38pm This past year has brought a groundswell of labor activism—including in bookselling, where a number of stores have voted in favor of unionizing as a way of securing fair wages and treatment for workers. Below is an ongoing list of bookstores whose employees have voted to unionize (which may include some
The Hobbit is one of the biggest-selling books of all time. An estimated 100 million people have read Tolkien’s classic children’s novel since it was first published in 1937. The story of its origins, and Tolkien’s supposed invention of the word ‘hobbit’ (of which more below), are well-known. But how should we ‘read’ The Hobbit?
May 17, 2021, 1:42pm Today in 1893 was the first performance of Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas and Mélisande, which was met with modest praise from his peers and confusion from critics. Little did Maeterlinck know that the then-unassuming Pelléas and Mélisande would lay the groundwork for an enduring feud—between Maeterlinck and Claude Debussy, starting when
May 17, 2021, 1:03pm Today, Poets & Writers announced that Carl Phillips has won the 2021 Jackson Poetry Prize, awarded annually by Poets & Writers to an American poet of exceptional talent. The Prize comes with an unrestricted award of $75,000 to provide winners the time and encouragement to write. Three judges, the poets Jericho
‘Hath not a Jew eyes?’ ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’ These are among the most famous lines from William Shakespeare’s comedy, The Merchant of Venice. One of the common misconceptions people who haven’t read or seen The Merchant of Venice fall prey to is the notion that the ‘merchant’ of the title
May 14, 2021, 12:22pm Because you can always use another gorgeous library to imagine yourself inside: MAD Architects has built a seaside library in Haikou, China that eschews blocky, familiar design in favor of flowing forms mimicking the clouds and sea that surround it. Essentially, it’s a cloudlike paradise on the water—are you sold yet?
May 14, 2021, 1:07pm Somerset’s Combe Florey House, once the family home of Brideshead Revisited author Evelyn Waugh and his son Auberon, is finally for sale—and it’s pretty spectacular, looking onto parkland and water. The grounds include a twelve-bedroom home with red sandstone facades; a pool and pool house; a tennis court; several outbuildings; and
Doves are well-known symbols of peace. Although such symbolism is strongly associated with Christianity, the associations between doves and peace go back much further than this: in ancient Mesopotamia, doves were symbols of Inanna-Ishtar, the goddess of love, sexuality, and (perhaps surprisingly) war. Indeed, the ancient Greek word for ‘dove’, peristerá, may be derived from
May 14, 2021, 1:18pm Today marks fifteen years since the death of Stanley Kunitz, tenth Poet Laureate of the United States and fiercely dedicated teacher. Kunitz once spoke of the importance of reading his work aloud: “I write my poems for the ear . . . in fact, my method of writing a poem is
TODAY: In 1856, L. Frank Baum is born. Tayari Jones reconsiders a watershed moment of Black storytelling, Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, nearly 40 years later. | Lit Hub How an obsessive scholar saved Iceland’s literary legacy, while a three-day fire burned down Copenhagen—and virtually every book in it. | Lit Hub History Pride and Property:
‘Cat in the Rain’ is a very short story by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), published in his early 1925 collection In Our Time. Hemingway wrote ‘Cat in the Rain’ for his wife Hadley while they were living in Paris. She wanted to get a cat, but he said they were too poor. ‘Cat in the Rain’