The History Of Literature

Jacke takes a look at the life and works of American novelist Henry James (1843-1916). Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy.  Since you're listening to Th

She was admired by Dr. Johnson, revered by Jane Austen, and referred to as "the mother of English fiction" by Virginia Woolf. In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the life and works of Frances Burney (1752-1840), author of the influential early novels Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782), and Camilla (1796). Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit th

Jacke hosts Jenny Minton Quigley, editor of the new collection LOLITA IN THE AFTERLIFE: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century, for a discussion of Vladimir Nabokov's classic (and controversial) 1958 novel. Jenny Minton Quigley is the daughter of Lolita's original publisher in America, Walter J. Minton. Lolita in the Afterlife includes contributions by the following twenty-first century literary luminaries: Robin Givhan • Aleksandar Hemon • Jim Shepard • Emily Mortimer • Laura Lippman • Erika L. Sánchez • Sarah Weinman • Andre Dubus III • Mary Gaitskill • Zainab Salbi • Christina Baker Kline • Ian Frazier • Cheryl Strayed • Sloane Crosley • Victor LaValle • Jill Kargman • Lila Azam Zanganeh • Roxane Gay • Claire Dederer • Jessica Shattuck • Stacy Schiff • Susan Choi • Kate Elizabeth Russell • Tom Bissell • Kira Von Eichel • Bindu Bansinath • Dani Shapiro • Alexander Chee • Lauren Groff • Morgan Jerkins Help support the show at patreon.com/literature 

Jacke continues this week's look at Willa Cather by zeroing in on the style and substance of My Antonia (1918), Cather's celebrated novel about Bohemian immigrants struggling to survive on the unforgiving prairies of Nebraska. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows,

Willa Cather (1873-1947) went from a childhood in Nebraska to a career in publishing in New York City, where she became one of the most successful women in journalism. And then, after a period as an editor for one of the most famous magazines in America, she focused on writing novels about the hardscrabble lives of immigrants trying to tame the Midwestern prairie, including enduring classics like O Pioneers! and My Antonia. In this episode, Jacke is joined by Lauren Marino, author of Bookish Broads: Women Who Wrote Themselves Into History, to talk about the life and works of Willa Cather. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The His

Following our last episode with Patricia Engel, Jacke takes a closer look at Gabriel García Márquez, including his literary influences, his search for truth in nostalgia and history, and his use of invention and the marvelous to approach a kind of heightened sense of what's possible, what's actual, and what's essential. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage

Author Patricia Engel joins Jacke to talk about her childhood in New Jersey, her artistic family, her lifelong love of stories and writing, her new novel Infinite Country, and "The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother" by Gabriel García Márquez, a story she first read as a 14-year-old and which she returns to often. PATRICIA ENGEL is the author of Infinite Country, a Reese’s Book Club pick, Esquire Book Club pick, Indie Next pick, Amazon Best Book of the Month, and more. Her other books include The Veins of the Ocean, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year; It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, which won the International Latino Book Award, and of Vida, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and the Young Lions Fiction Award; winner of a Florida Book Award, International Latino Book Award and Independent Publisher Book Award, longlisted for the Story Prize and the Dayto

After taking a look at the eventful life and dramatic death of Yukio Mishima in our last episode, Jacke turns to a closer look at the works of Mishima, including appraisals by Jay McInerney and Haruki Murakami, before turning to a deep dive into the world of Spring Snow, the first volume in Mishima's four-book masterpiece The Sea of Fertility. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetize

In November of 1970, the most famous novelist in Japan dropped off the final pages of his masterpiece with his publisher, then went to a military office in Tokyo, where he and a small band of supporters took the commander hostage. The novelist - whose name was Yukio Mishima - then appeared on the balcony before a crowd of a thousand soldiers and supporters. After exhorting them to overthrow the Japanese government and return Japan to its proud imperial past, he stepped away from the balcony and committed seppuku, the ritualized suicide made famous by samurai warriors from Japan's legendary shogunate period. Who was Mishima? What brought him to this point in his life? In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the turbulent life and dramatic death of Yukio Mishima (1925-1970). PLUS a special announcement!! Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @theja

Jacke takes a look at adult literacy and continuing education, anti-literacy laws in nineteenth-century America, and two famous passages from the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), in which the young slave manages to overcome obstacles and teach himself to read and write. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and si

When Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) was a child, her father made the Hansberry name famous by fighting for justice in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. By the time she was thirty, she herself was famous as the author of A Raisin in the Sun (1959), which tells the story of a black family attempting to purchase a home in a white neighborhood. In this episode, we look at the brief life and towering accomplishments of the woman who was the godmother to Nina Simone's daughter and whose remarks to talented young African American students inspired Simone's song "Young, Gifted and Black." Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated

The History of Literature presents a short story by Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, produced by Storybound. PLUS! In preparation for our Writers Block episode, we hear from three great writers - Virginia Woolf, Iris Murdoch, and Franz Kafka - who privately (and achingly) wrote about not writing. Enjoy! Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, a finalist for The Story Prize (2020/2021), and longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Her work has been listed as Notable in the Best American Essays series, and her writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Brevity, dead housekeeping, Apogee Journal, Catapult, Harvard Review, ESPN’s The Undefeated, The Baltimore Review, TueNight, Ebony and Bitch magazines, and various anthologies. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and a past Pushcart P

Anna North, author and journalist, joins us for a full discussion of the Western genre, how twenty-first-century authors have revived the form with modern-day sensibilities and a more layered understanding of history, her love of George Herriman's quietly subversive Krazy Kat comics, and her new novel Outlawed, a riveting adventure story of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform the Wild West. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.   ***

In 1819, John Keats quit his job as an assistant surgeon, abandoned an epic poem he was writing, and focused his poetic energies on shorter works. What followed was one of the most fertile periods in the history of poetry, as in a few months' time Keats completed six masterpieces, including such celebrated classics as "To Autumn," "Ode to a Nightingale," and "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Now, two hundred years later, an American scholar has written an exciting new book called Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse, in which she gathers and revisits the Great Odes, viewing them through a personal prism. Anahid Nersessian was born and grew up in New York City. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and has taught at Columbia University and UCLA. Her first book, Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment was published by Harvard University Press in 2015, and her second book, The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life, by the University of Chicago in 2020. She lives in Los Angeles, CA. Help support the sh

Following up on the recommendation of our guest Chigozie Obioma, Jacke takes a closer look at Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day, including the story of how Ishiguro came to write it, what he found missing, and how the singer Tom Waits helped show Ishiguro how to transform the novel into great art. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.   *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to vis

In this episode, we talk to Chigozie Obioma, whom the New York Times has called "the heir to Chinua Achebe." We discuss his childhood in Nigeria, his novels The Fishermen and An Orchestra of Minorities, what he's discovered about how fiction works, his love for the novel The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, and his recent work with Alexander (www.alxr.com), a platform for nonfiction storytelling that unites award-winning writers, filmmakers, and actors. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/historyof

In our last episode, we examined the evidence of Jane Austen's 1995-96 dalliance with her "Irish friend," the gentlemanlike (but impoverished) young law student Tom Lefroy. Intriguingly, she began writing Pride and Prejudice, her classic novel of romance, love, and mixed messages, later that year. Might Tom have been the inspiration for the beloved Mr. Darcy? And might Jane herself have been the model for the even more beloved Elizabeth Bennet? Jacke takes a look at the possible connections, reads several passages from the novel itself, and offers some thoughts on the attempts to find a Darcy-Lizzy relationship somewhere in the real-life example of Tom and Jane. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you

In the Christmas holidays of 1795-96, a young Irishman named Thomas Lefroy left his legal studies in London to visit some relatives who lived in the countryside. While staying with them, he attended a series of provincial balls that also happened to be attended by the Austens, including the 20-year-old Jane Austen. "I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved," Jane later wrote to her sister Cassandra. "Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking." What transpired between these two young people? How did it end? And could it have been the inspiration for Pride and Prejudice, the novel that famously introduced a charming young woman to a mysterious outsider at just such a ball? In this episode, Jacke takes a look at what we know - and what we tantalizingly don't - about the young Jane Austen and her dalliance with Thomas Lefroy. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jacke

Jacke kicks off the next hundred episodes with a discussion of the Netflix series Lupin, the story of Proust begging his neighbors for quiet and secretly paying newspapers for good reviews, and a visit from Mike Palindrome to discuss his project to read Proust in an online community. Along the way, we discuss Within a Budding Grove (i.e. what makes it the dark horse favorite of many Proustians) and Mike selects his Top Ten Tweets from the #ProustTogether project. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated! The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at www.thepodglomerate.com/hist

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) was born into the anonymity of slavery and died as the most famous African American of the nineteenth century. After a harrowing escape to freedom in 1838, he devoted the rest of his life to issues of justice and equality, applying his talents as an orator, journalist, autobiographer, fiction writer, publisher, government appointee, advocate, and intellectual to help transform a country from its origins as a slaveholding nation, to one ravaged by Civil War, to a collection of former enemies trying to find reconciliation, forgiveness, and a path to a brighter future. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com. New!!! Looking for an easy to way to buy Jacke a coffee? Now you can at paypal.me/jackewilson. Your generosity is much appreciated!