literary history

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  11/1/2021
  

  The Most Ambitious Diary in History

  by Benjamin Anastas

  The playwright and classicist Claude Fredericks kept 65,000 pages of a journal, likely the longest record of one American life ever kept. Is it valuable as a documentary record, or as a demonstration of the self-mythologizing work of the diarist? 

• 
• 10/10/2021
  

  Recovering Women's Reproductive Lives, One Mutilated Record at a Time

  by Catherine Prendergast

  "Far too often, archives resemble graveyards with marked tombs for men in which a few bones of women are scattered. It’s time to dig up all of the bones and ask them what story they tell."

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  9/7/2021
  

  Toni Morrison's Vision of Justice Was an Ethos of Care

  by Farah Jasmine Griffin

  "What does justice look like for centuries of systemic abuse and violence enacted by a society built upon withholding justice from Black people? In all of her novels Toni Morrison contemplates the nature and practice of justice."

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  4/27/2021
  

  Literary and Manual Labors: Pittsfield, Massachusetts

  by Jeffrey Lawrence

  Herman Melville's move to Pittsfield in western Massachusetts wasn't a withdrawal from society; he was active in building the cultural life of the Berkshire region. 

• 
• SOURCE: TIME
  6/15/2020
  

  The Risky Journey That Saved One of China’s Greatest Literary Treasures

  by Janie Chang

  The story of the Siku Quanshu Wenlan Ge is inseparable from the story of people who risked all to protect a cultural legacy, from the librarian who sold off his house to the students who would not abandon the heavy boxes that slowed their travel.

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  11/7/19
  

  The Taproot Remains: On the Life and Legacy of Ernest J. Gaines

  by Matthew Teutsch

  "Gaines...wrote about the people he knew. The land he knew. Their struggles. Their joys. Their lives."

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  7/19/19
  

  The Literary Battle of the Sexes, 1907-Style

  Of the 28 most popular books published between 1895 and 1902, 25 were by men. By 1904, though, the situation had begun to improve — and 1907 was a record-breaking year for women’s book sales.

• 
• SOURCE: NY Times
  7/20/19
  

  The Vicious Fun of America’s Most Famous Literary Circle

  by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

  The Algonquin Round Table trained a generation of socially conscious writers.

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  6/12/2019
  

  What Orwell’s ‘1984’ tells us about today’s world, 70 years after it was published

  by Stephen Groening

  The techniques and technologies described in the novel are very much present in today’s world.

• 
• SOURCE: Literary Hub
  1/14/19
  

  A Brief History of Children's Literature: Nasty, Brutish, and Short

  by Jennifer Traig

  For most of history, authors have used their words to render children speechless.