Latest posts
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George Eliot and Middlemarch: The Greatest English Novel?

Virginia Woolf called Middlemarch “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” and the backhanded compliment still stings because it is…
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B. M. Bower: The Woman Who Wrote the West Behind a Man’s Initials

Near the close of Chip, of the Flying U — the 1904 novel that launched B. M. Bower’s career and a series that would feed her for thirty years — a cowboy…
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Homer: The Complete Works — Why Read All of Homer in One Volume

There is a moment in the twenty-second book of the Iliad, just after Achilles has run Hector down beneath the walls of Troy, when the narrative pauses to…
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Huckleberry Finn and the American Voice

Why is Huckleberry Finn important to American literature?
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Shirley and the Forgotten Side of Charlotte Brontë

What is Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley about?
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Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Map of the Afterlife

How do I read Dante’s Divine Comedy?
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Hard-Boiled vs Cozy: The Two Souls of Crime Fiction

What is the difference between hard-boiled and cozy mysteries?
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Dubliners: The Best Way Into Joyce

Should I read Dubliners before Ulysses?
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Persuasion: Austen’s Quietest and Saddest Novel

Is Persuasion the best Jane Austen novel?
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The Woman in White and the Birth of the Sensation Novel

What is the sensation novel and why does The Woman in White matter?