Literature

The Progressive Case for Teaching Shakespeare

The Strange Second Act of the Man Who Brought Smut to American Literature

The Man Booker International Prize Goes Global but Lands Back Home

Jonathan Franzen's “Bad” Sex Writing Isn't His Fault

Life Is "Triggering." The Best Literature Should Be, Too.

A few Columbia students want warnings on Ovid. What's next? Here's what Literature Fascism would look like.

The Risks of Siding With French Secularism

The National Front's defense of 'Charlie Hebdo' should make the mag's progressive American defenders wary

'Far from the Madding Crowd' Tries Too Hard to Make Its Victorian Heroine a 21st-Century Feminist

VIDA Wants Writers to Create "Important" Female Characters. Bad Advice.

What Gandhi Understood About Inflammatory Depictions of Muhammad

Henry James Thought Oscar Wilde Was a Talentless Self-Promoter. Here's What Happened When The Two Met.

"I Think Spinster Is An Identity Every Woman Can Claim"

Talking with the author of 'Texts from Jane Eyre'

Michel Faber Wrote This Heartbreaking Book While His Wife Was Dying. Now He Says It's His Last.

In Praise of Oscar Wilde's Brilliant Wit, Sparkling Conversation, and Daring Genius

5 Steps to Getting Over Your Ignorance of the Nobel Winner for Literature

Gorgeous Vintage Sketches of Tolstoy and Your Other Favorite Authors

F. Scott Fitzgerald Thought This Book Would Be the Best American Novel Of His Time

Knopf Book Designer Hates the Classic 'Great Gatsby' Cover

In an interview, Peter Mendulsund explains why some covers work and others fail

Virginia Woolf's Belated Obituary for Jane Austen

What would Austen have written about if she'd lived a longer life?

63 Years Ago, We Knew That 'The Catcher in the Rye' Was Insufferable and Overrated

Politics and Fiction

Morals are the husband and wife of literature