Essay Auden in nature and history July 22, 2024 If you look at the volumes published so far in the Auden Critical Editions series, you鈥檒l see that, with the exception of the Juvenilia (a unique kind of text), they feature book-length works. Read More
Podcast Natural Magic May 20, 2024 Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. Read More
Interview Frank L. Cioffi on Stellar English May 09, 2024 Frank L. Cioffi wanted to write a handbook that was more than merely a reference work, a grammar handbook that readers would feel compelled to read cover-to-cover. Read More
Essay The 2024 solar eclipse might be an omen, but what does it portend? April 18, 2024 As the warmest winter in human history draws to a close, many of us are unsure about what comes next. At least celestial mechanics are unaffected. Read More
Interview James Marcus on Glad to the Brink of Fear April 15, 2024 James Marcus introduces us to Emerson as a visionary and a skeptic, an ardent lover and a fiery political activist. Read More
Essay Beyond bestiaries: the cats and dogs of Old English February 12, 2024 The words for 鈥榗at鈥� and 鈥榙og鈥� are virtually the same in Old English 鈥� hund (from which we get 鈥榟ound鈥�) and cat聽or catte (pronounced COT-tuh). Read More
Essay Turning language inside out January 05, 2024 We know that words wield immense power. They express, represent, inspire, provoke, evoke. They can wound, figuratively, and also literally. Read More
Essay The long history of the chapter book November 14, 2023 Very few adult readers are likely to remember it, but imagine, if you will, your first experience reading a book divided into chapters. What confronted you was a story that unexpectedly stuttered. Read More
Essay Lingering, longing at dawn October 23, 2023 In a mountain town whose name I鈥檝e forgotten, about fifty miles from Marrakech, I remembered an old woman sitting alone in a field. She had lost her home. Read More
Interview Simon West on Prickly Moses October 13, 2023 An uncanny blend of the external and the intimate has been a hallmark of Simon West鈥檚 poetry for nearly twenty years. In this new collection, the Australian poet and Italianist delights in the transforming and endlessly varied powers of naming and speaking. Read More
Podcast In Praise of Good 快色直播tores September 07, 2023 Jeff Deutsch鈥攖he director of Chicago鈥檚 Seminary Co-op 快色直播tores, one of the finest bookstores in the world鈥攑ays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. Read More
Interview Emily Hauser on How Women Became Poets August 24, 2023 Women, as Virginia Woolf recognized, need rooms of their own to write. So, too, have women writers throughout history needed a term to describe what it is they do. Read More
Interview In dialogue: Women in translation August 16, 2023 In recent years, 鈥淲omen in Translation鈥� month has emerged as a critical platform for questioning the underrepresentation of women authors in translated literature and exploring the significance of bringing their works to a global audience. At its core lie the vital and pressing questions: Why aren鈥檛 more works by women being translated, and why are women in translation so important? Read More
Podcast Pleasure and Efficacy July 30, 2023 Grace Lavery investigates gender transition as it has been experienced and represented in the modern period. Considering examples that range from the novels of George Eliot to the psychoanalytic practice of Sigmund Freud to marriage manuals by Marie Stopes, Lavery explores the skepticism found in such works about whether it is truly possible to change one鈥檚 sex. Read More
Essay The vanishing lives of coral July 17, 2023 At least in the twenty-first-century popular imagination, coral alternately symbolizes either a blissful day at the beach or the end of our planet as we know it. In the nineteenth century, however, coral had many other lives. Read More
