The History of Literature Podcast

774 Robert Louis Stevenson (with Leo Damrosch) Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) suffered from poor health for most of his life, and yet he possessed immense vitality. In this episode, Jacke talks to biographer…

"Yes, I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde. How was this to be explained?"
– Robert Louis Stevenson

@jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Leo Damrosch about his biography, Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. @yalepress.bsky.social #books #literature #biography

773 The Films of Rob Reiner (with Mike Palindrome) | My Last Book with Matt Abrahams

What a sweet and funny episode of the History of Literature where Jacke Wilson shares favorite lines from Rob Reiner's films with Mike Palindrome. open.spotify.com/episode/3k6P... #RobReiner @holpod.bsky.social

On this day in 1850, the American writer Kate Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri.

#WarblerPress #indiebooks #feminism #KateChopin

The Truffaut Essays That Clear Up Misguided Notions of Auteurism Truffaut viewed authorship in terms of literal authority, of power, and he placed as much emphasis on the production of films as on their direction.

BOTD François Truffaut!!!
MCCT5: 5)Green Room 4)Finally Sunday 3)Day for Night 2)Soft Skin 1)400 Blows
Highly rec Truffaut on Cinema: midcenturycinema.org/node/129
More:
@davidlsims.bsky.social: www.theatlantic.com/entertainmen...
@tnyfrontrow.bsky.social: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

#ComingUpOnTCM

ROMEO AND JULIET (1936) Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, John Barrymore
Dir.: George Cukor 1:45 AM PT

Middle-aged members of feuding families fall in love, leading to tragic results.

2h 7m | Romantic Tragedy | TV-G

#TCM #TCMParty #WilliamShakespeare

alright, faithful followers of literature, we're back to starting on march 1!
#Satantangotogether

catch up on your other readings!

what are you reading these days?

I just finished book 1 (of 7) of ON THE CALCULATION OF VOLUME! a captivating book. crazy as it sounds, I think it's rereadable...

"Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall,
Whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise,
Only to wonder at unlawful things"
– Christopher Marlowe #botd

For more about Marlowe, listen to @jackewilson.bsky.social's talk with Stephen Greenblatt, author of Dark Renaissance. #books @wwnorton.com

Book cover. William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

Author photo. William S. Burroughs

"I did not understand what the title meant until my recent recovery. The title means exactly what the words say: NAKED Lunch – a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork." – William S. Burroughs

#botd #books #williamsburroughs

773 The Films of Rob Reiner (with Mike Palindrome) | My Last Boo… In mid-December 2025, the world was shocked by the horrible and tragic news that beloved film director Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle Singer Reiner had been murde…

@jackewilson.bsky.social sky.social and Mike @literaturesc.bsky.social sky.social celebrate Rob Reiner's amazing run of indelible films in the 1980s and early 1990s, including a selection of their Top 10 favorite lines from Reiner's films. #films #robreiner

Book cover. Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Author photo. Thornton Wilder

"This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying."
– Thornton Wilder, Our Town

Wilder's Our Town opened on Broadway, February 4, 1938, and received the Pulitzer Prize later that year.

#otd #thorntonwilder #plays #books #literature

766 Gertrude Stein (with Francesca Wade) | Ruskin on the Only On… Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) has long been one of the most famous - and most polarizing - figures in modernism. Was she a trailblazing genius? Or a literary charlatan…

“In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling.”
– Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons

#botd #poetry #prose #gertrudestein #books @jackewilson.bsky.social @scribnerbooks.bsky.social

438 How Was Your Ulysses? (with Mike Palindrome) In 1922, a writer for the Observer commented: "No book has been more eagerly and curiously awaited by the strange little inner circle of book-lovers and littérateur…

"Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past."
– James Joyce, Ulysses
#botd #books #literature #jamesjoyce

For more Joyce, take a listen to a past HOL episode, in which @jackewilson.bsky.social and Mike @literaturesc.bsky.social discuss Ulysses.

772 Thucydides and The History of the Peloponnesian War (with Po… The Ancient Greek historian and general Thucydides (c. 460-400 BCE) called his history of a war between Athens and Sparta "a possession for all time." More than 2,4…

"The true patriot isn't the man who refrains from attacking his city when he's been unjustly deprived of it, but the one whose loyalty is so ardent that he does all he can to get it back."
– Thucydides

#books #history @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social @jackewilson.bsky.social

I’ve read this book a few times. And need to read some other Muriel Spark.

Book cover. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Author photo. Muriel Spark

“One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

#botd #murielspark #books #literature

533 Langston Hughes in Context (with Vera Kutzinski and Anthony … It's another packed episode! First, Jacke talks to Langston Hughes scholars Vera Kutzinski and Anthony Reed about their new book, Langston Hughes in Context , which…

"I, too, am America."
–Langston Hughes #botd

@jackewilson.bsky.social talks to authors Vera Kutzinski and Anthony Reed about their book, Langston Hughes in Context. #books @universitypress.cambridge.org #literature #poetry #langstonhughes

Book cover. Thomas Paine, Common Sense and The American Crisis

Author portrait. Thomas Paine

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
– Thomas Paine, The American Crisis

#books #history

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction Here are this week’s Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers for fiction, based on sales in hundreds of independent bookstores nationwide, generously provided by the American Booksellers Association. …

Here are the bestselling fiction books of the week from independent presses.
buff.ly/8tY5xfN

468 Chekhov Becomes Chekhov (with Bob Blaisdell) In 1886, the twenty-six-year-old Anton Chekhov was practicing medicine, supporting his family, falling in and out love, writing pieces for newspapers at a furious p…

@jackewilson.bsky.social talks to Bob Blaisdell, author of Chekhov Becomes Chekhov, about the two-year period in which #Chekhov went from a virtual unknown to a promising literary star admired by Tolstoy himself. #botd #literature @pegasusbooks.bsky.social

771 Shakespeare and the Generation of Genius - The Role of Perfo… Robin Lithgow spent her life immersed in the performing arts, including a childhood in the theater and decades spent as an educator and arts administrator. But it w…

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances"
– Shakespeare

#books #literature #shakespeare #performingarts @jackewilson.bsky.social

James Baldwin on How to Live Through Your Darkest Hour and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe “I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of th…

"I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time."

Baldwin on how to live through your darkest hour www.themarginalian.org/2026/01/28/j...

Bookshop.org is SIX today. 🥳

In these six years, we’ve raised over $44 MILLION for local bookstores—and we have all of YOU to thank for that.

Thank you for loving and supporting indie bookstores as much as we do.

“If we want to be sincere, we must admit that there is a well-nourished love and an ill-nourished love. And the rest is literature.” – Colette #botd

Stay tuned for @jackewilson.bsky.social's interview with Kathleen Antonioli about her new biography of Colette. #books @reaktionbooks.bsky.social

Book cover. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Author photo. Lewis Carroll

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” –Lewis Carroll #botd

For more about Arendt, take a listen to the conversation with @jackewilson.bsky.social and Samantha Rose Hill about her biography of Arendt. #books #hannaharendt @reaktionbooks.bsky.social

'There's no other poem like it': Why this Robert Burns classic is a masterpiece On Burns Night this Sunday – and 235 years after Tam O'Shanter was published in 1791 – Scots everywhere may well be treated to a masterwork with a unique, universal appeal.

"Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother's son, take heed,
Whene'er to drink you are inclin'd,
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys o'er dear,
Remember Tam o' Shanter's mear."
– Robert Burns, "Tam O'Shanter"
b. Jan 25, 1759
#poetry #literature #robertburns

770 Shakespeare and Civility (with Indira Ghose) | Robert W. Ser… Civility can help a society overcome tribal loyalties and cooperate for the common good--and when political and religious factions threaten to break a society apart…

"Art thou thus boldened, man, by thy distress,
Or else a rude despiser of good manners,
That in civility thou seem’st so empty?"
– Shakespeare, As You Like It

@jackewilson.bsky.social #books #shakespeare @princetonupress.bsky.social

For more: @jackewilson.bsky.social talks with Francesca Wade about her biography of Gertrude Stein. #gertrudestein #biography @scribnerbooks.bsky.social @nybooks.com

735 Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (with Mark Hussey) | My Last … Jacke talks to author Mark Hussey ( Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel ) about Virginia Woolf's beloved novel Mrs Dalloway , which turned 100 earlier this year. PLU…

“The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.” – Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

#botd #virginiawoolf #books #literature @jackewilson.bsky.social @manchesterup.bsky.social

For more about Woolf and The Life of Violet, take a listen to @jackewilson.bsky.social's conversation with Urmila Seshagiri. #books #virginiawoolf @princetonupress.bsky.social