Literary History

Lost Titles, Forgotten Rhymes: How to Find a Novel, Short Story, or Poem Without Knowing its Title or Author

Lost Titles, Forgotten Rhymes: How to Find a Novel, Short Story, or Poem Without Knowing its Title or Author (Virtual Programs & Services, Library of Congress) This is a site you’ll definitely want to bookmark. What if you wanted to locate Robert Burton’s masterful 17th century opus, The Anatomy of Melancholy? But wait: You can’t […]

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RACISM RAMPANT AT ALABAMA SCHOOL

A south Alabama town that was the inspiration for the setting in Harper Lee’s book “To Kill a Mockingbird” is finding itself as the backdrop for a real-life legal case involving allegations of racism at school. The parents of several black junior high school students have filed a discrimination lawsuit claiming their children are subject

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Happy birthday, Harper Lee!

This is from The Writer’s Almanac, which is produced by Prairie Home Productions and presented by American Public Media: It’s the birthday of (Nelle) Harper Lee, (books by this author) the author of To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), born in Monroeville, Alabama (1926), the daughter of a local newspaper editor and lawyer. She was a

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Landmark Massachusetts Building Where Wharton Wrote Faces Foreclosure

Landmark Massachusetts Building Where Wharton Wrote Faces Foreclosure – New York Times “The Mount, Edith Wharton’s estate in Lenox, Mass., is in danger of being put in foreclosure.” To stay open, The Mount needs to raise $3 million by March 24.

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Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers – New York Times

Gatsby’s Green Light Beckons a New Set of Strivers – New York Times F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby continues to inspire urban youth, many of whom are immigrants, with its portrayal of the American dream. The book is still required reading in half the high schools in the U.S. It sells about

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book review

“In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote

Introductory Notes Truman Capote (1924-1984) was born in New Orleans and educated in private schools in Connecticut and New York. As a young man he worked for The New Yorker. He received early acclaim as a writer, but he continued in the public eye mainly for his flamboyant life in New York City, where his

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The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media The Writer’s Almanac, sponsored by American Public Media and The Poetry Foundation, provides a poem each day, plus literary and historical notes for the day’s date. In addition to reading online, you can also sign up for a daily e-mail or listen to the podcast version.

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What Exactly is Literature?

NPR : Best-Selling Book Shows ‘Halo’ Game’s Wide Appeal That’s the question raised by news items such as this: The action-adventure book Contact Harvest is on the USA Today and New York Times best-seller lists. Author Joseph Staten had never written a novel but was uniquely qualified to write this one. Contact Harvest is the

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Dorothy Sayers and British Detective Fiction

NPR : A Brutal, British Mystery Novel for Boxing Day Jonathan Hayes, a New York City forensic pathologist, describes how a BBC broadcast of Dorothy Sayers’s novel The Nine Tailors made him appreciate Sayers’s influence on the mystery genre: In Nine Tailors, the violence is not bloodless, but brutal, and the characters are made of

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Literature of Christmas Eve

From The Writer’s Almanac, a publication of Prairie Home Productions, presented by American Public Media:   Literary and Historical Notes: It’s Christmas Eve, the setting for many works of fiction including O. Henry’s (books by this author) “Gift of the Magi,” a short story about Jim and Della, the impoverished young couple, in which each

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