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Last year, Sarah Skwire and Amy Willis got together to discuss two famous Christmas stories by Charles Dickens. This year, they did some thinking about the equally classic Christmas story, "The Gift of the Magi," by O. Henry. It's a… more

Today, I turn to Susan Colón’s work “Dickens’s HARD TIMES and Dante’s INFERNO,” in which she makes the case that Dickens’s work Hard Times includes imagery, descriptions, and “moral analysis” of his characters in a way suggestive of… more

Stephen Bertman has observed several structural similarities between Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Dante’s entire Divine Comedy, including their shared tripartite structure, exploration of religious themes, and notions of… more

Much can and has already been said regarding Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: the Rings of Power’s merits and flaws, both in the show’s relation to Tolkien’s universally acclaimed world The Tolkien Societybuilding and established… more

Many a literary critic classifies the (unofficial) national bard of Scotland, Robert Burns, as a poet of the Romantic Movement. It is easy to see why. His poetry deals with nature and those living and working close to it; embraces… more

Given that today is the birthday of one of the greatest writers of English prose and poetry, John Milton, I pulled a few of Milton's works from the shelves of Pierre Goodrich's collection in Liberty Fund's rare book room. The first… more

Camille DeAngelis's Bones and All, now an award winning film directed by Luca Guadagnino promises a delicious repast for readers interested in horror. Cannibalism, wicked relatives, romantic tension, a road trip, a carnival and a… more

I will confess that I decided to take a look at Pierre Goodrich's 1948 copy of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis because it's a book I love, and not because this edition is a particularly compelling example of the bookbinder's… more

Behold the beast who bears the pointed tail,who crosses mountains, shatters weapons, walls!Behold the one whose stench fills all the world!

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) surely has won the popularity contest as “the greatest American poet” and other accolades beyond counting. The Poetry Foundation writes that “Walt Whitman is America’s world poet—a latter-day successor to… more

A menu of our traditional Thanksgiving treats for visitors to the Reading Room

Antigone is one of the greatest literary debates about freedom and responsibility in human history, and one of our most enduring works of literature as well. Pierre Goodrich's 1900 edition of Antigone is clearly well loved, and… more

What is the nature of power and accountability in a fascist regime? The new Star Wars television show Andor is interested in interrogating this question and especially the ways that unaccountable power undermines itself.

Today, we will consider appearance vs. reality in Homer's Odyssey. When Odysseus returns home to Ithaka after his ten year long journey, he does so in disguise. He comes as a beggar, a dismal vagabond, and though he is a war-hero, a… more

Before denizens of the web could pass hours wandering down rabbit holes like McSweeney’s Internet Tendency or The Onion, what did well-read, culturally au currant folks do for amusement?

In an article published by the British Library, Stephanie Forward, Ph.D., writes: “In England, the Romantic poets were…inspired by a desire for liberty… There was an emphasis on the importance of the individual; a conviction that… more

The Romantic poets, long in English poetry’s pantheon, present a paradox. As a movement, they are defined by their emotional power, preoccupation with nature, fascination with the mythic, and their search for the ideal in earlier… more

What would happen if Dr. Seuss started throwing shade?  To the untrained ear, it might sound something like the satiric barbs of Alexander Pope, diss-master of the Enlightenment. Consider his dismissal of Lord Hervey, referred… more

The situation at the beginning of Book Three of Homer’s Iliad is this: a truce had been called between the Trojans and the invading Achaians after nine long years of war in order to allow for a single-combat, winner-take-all, fight… more

Karl Marx famously observed, "Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks."  His comments have inspired critics such as Franco Moretti to… more

The Romantics—Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Shelley, and a dozen others—are probably the poets whose names we recall best from school. As a movement in English language poetry, Romanticism towers over all others and still… more

William Shakespeare’s plays have been performed in many ways. They’ve been translated into nearly every language on Earth and at least one “alien” language (Klingon). Sometimes they have undergone serious changes. Legal requirements… more

It was dangerous age to publish poetry. Imagine a poem, today, attacked as subversive and “as wicked as anything that ever reached the world”—a poem by a poet who today is in the pantheon of English Romantic poetry. Any poet of our… more

Long before Christopher Nolan was wowing audiences with expensive CGI and notions of thoughts being placed into minds via dreams, epic Greek literature was doing much the same. For those who need a brief refresher on the concept… more

This summer's Top Gun: Maverick blasted past other films in U.S. theaters and continues its path around the globe.  There are many reasons for its financial success—it's now the ninth-highest grossing film in domestic box… more