The History of Literature Podcast

New blog post: Celebrating Sylvia Plath on her birthday, Oct. 27, 1932. #books #literature #poetry #botd

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am." – Sylvia Plath #botd From the archives – @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to Plath's biographer Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. #books @vintagebooks.bsky.social

Great news for Ghost Month! In anticipation for the upcoming film adaptation of Simon Wroe's novel, take a listen to @jackewilson.bsky.social's conversation with @simonwroe.bsky.social on the History of Literature Podcast. #books #literature @faberbooks.bsky.social

"And what is all this life but a kind of comedy, wherein men walk up and down in one another's disguises and act their respective parts" – Erasmus #botd #books #literature

In this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social is joined by the alumni of the first-ever History of Literature Podcast Tour for a lively discussion with poet and biographer Fiona Sampson (Two Way Mirror: The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning). #books #literature @profilebooks.bsky.social

Test your literary knowledge!

"I slide my face along to the mirror sideways, to see that side-smile, a pale look, tired and sly. Hey, who is glancing there? Shadow-me, not with malice, but mercurially shot with foreknowledge of dread and sweat." – Denise Levertov #botd #books #literature #poetry

Looking for a fun reading activity for two? Pick up Great Detective! Book A, take on the identity of Sherlock Holmes and choose your adventure. What comes next depends on your partner's choices from Great Detective! Book B! To buy @jackewilson.bsky.social's book, visit press.historyofliterature.com

"Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you." – Doris Lessing #botd #books #literature #nobelprizeinliterature

How did a town of just over two thousand people come to host so many celebrated American writers? In this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Bruce Nichols about his new book The Emerson Circle: The Concord Radicals Who Reinvented the World. #books @simonandschuster.bsky.social

For more about the book, take a listen to Robin Waterfield's conversation with @jackewilson.bsky.social on the History of Literature Podcast. #books #literature #fables @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social

"In October I confessed my love for her, and she allowed me to kiss her." – Ivan Bunin, The Collected Stories #botd #books #stories #novels #literature #nobelprizeinliterature

"It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?" – Samuel Taylor Coleridge #botd #books #literature #poetry @jackewilson.bsky.social

This autumn spend some time with Shakespeare! Check out the twenty episodes on Shakespeare on the History of Literature Podcast. #books #literature #shakespeare #literaturepodcasts @jackewilson.bsky.social

"Her feet were grounded in reality. Because no matter how close or transparent the other side may appear, reality and illusion were two disparate worlds that could never be bridged." – Park Wan-suh, Lonesome You #botd #books #literature

“Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.” - Arthur Rimbaud #botd #books #literature #poetry

"Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set." – John le Carré #botd #books #literature

@jackewilson.bsky.social gets ready for the Halloween season with an episode filled with madness, murder, and ghosts! Included in the episode is Jacke's conversation with Simon Wroe, author of Ghost Month. #books #literature @faberbooks.bsky.social

"Memory likes to refer to blind spots. What has struck turns up uncalled for, under various guises; it enjoys disguise. Often it gives only vague information. Moreover, its mesh is sometimes large, sometimes small. Scraps of feeling and though literally fall through it." – Günter Grass #botd #books

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame." – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray #botd #books #literature

"Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places." – Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities #botd #books #literature

Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather, #botd Before you watch/rewatch The Godfather series to celebrate Puzo's birthday, you might take a listen to @jackewilson.bsky.social's conversation with author Karen M. Spence, author of The Companion Guide to The Godfather Trilogy. #books #thegodfather #film

"The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies." – Virgil #botd From the archives, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to biographer Sarah Ruden. #literature @yalepress.bsky.social

"love is more thicker than forget more thinner than recall more seldom than a wave is wet more frequent than to fail" – e. e. cummings #botd #books #literature #poetry

"The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind." – Katherine Mansfield #botd #literature

"As far as the eye could reach, this lonely forest sea rolled on and on till its faint blue billows broke against an incredibly distant horizon." – Conrad Richter, The Trees #botd #books #literature

"Schoolteachers can be some hard-eyed people, with talkin eyes; they mouth sayin one thing and them eyes be screamin another." – Alice Childress, A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich #botd #books #literature #plays

What does it mean to live a good life? In this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to translator Robin Waterfield and scholar John Sellars about their new edition of Aristotle's classic text. #books #literature #aristotle @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social

For more about the book, take a listen to this episode in which @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Paul Chrystal. #books #literature @reaktionbooks.bsky.social

"There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false." – Harold Pinter #botd #books #literature #plays #nobelprizeinliterature

Today author Anne Carson has been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. Throughout her entire authorship, Carson with a light touch explores the possibilities of writing, a process by which the literary sketch has become of particular value to her.

"My Poetry explains nothing clarifies nothing renounces nothing embraces no whole fulfills no hope creates no new rules of the game takes no part in play has a fixed territory which it must fill" – Tadeusz Różewicz #botd #books #poetry #literature

In this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Amy Motlagh about her book Colorblind: Racial Thinking and Cultural Production in Modern Iran and the Diaspora. #books #literature @stanfordpress.bsky.social

"We take unholy risks to prove we are what we cannot be. For instance, I am not even crazy." – Amiri Baraka #botd #books #literature #poetry #plays

In this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Sean Keilen about his book Shakespeare's Scholars: Three Lessons from the Liberal Arts. #books #literature #shakespeare @princetonupress.bsky.social

In this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to Malcolm Guite about his new book Galahad and the Grail, the first of a four-volume Arthuriad, which poetically retells the Arthurian legend of Galahad's quest to find the Holy Grail. #books #literature #arthurianlegend

In Monstrous Bitch, Eleanor Johnson masterfully reclaims the term “bitch,” transforming the narrative that portrayed women as monsters into a celebration of their power. Take the quiz to discover what you might have been labelled in the past & reclaim the admirable qualities of each archetype:

"For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons" – T. S. Eliot #botd #books #literature #poetry

"Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders." – William Faulkner, Light in August For more about Faulkner, check out @jackewilson.bsky.social's talk with author Carl Rollyson. #botd #books #literature #faulkner @uvapress.bsky.social

"When Iola opened her school she took pains to get acquainted with the parents of the children, and she gained their confidence and co-operation. Her face was a passport to their hearts. Ignorant of books, human faces were the scrolls from which they had been reading for ages." – Frances E.W. Harper

F. Scott Fitzgerald, #botd "I want to write something new," Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to his editor, "something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." Months later, he presented the results: the novel that would eventually be titled The Great Gatsby. #books #literature

From the archives – In this episode, @jackewilson.bsky.social takes a look at the life and works of Stendhal, whose innovative novels The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma made him one of the greatest and most influential novelists of all time. #books #literature

"May I not be denied the time once more to kiss the hands of the one who patiently and in step with me walked on and on and on and who loved most of all." – Jaroslav Seifert, "Autobiography" #books #literature #poetry #nobellaureate

“Fools, educated or not, will resent you for what you know. A woman like me is mistrusted and despised for her cleverness, feared by you because your fear’s misplaced.” – Euripides, Medea #botd #books #literature #plays

"One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe." – Upton Sinclair, b. Sept. 20, 1878 #books #literature

"Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change." – H. G. Wells, The Time Machine #botd #books #literature

In Episode 831, @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to author Rachel Pastan about her novel We're So Lucky to Live Here, in which a woman copes with a tragic loss by staging a production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in her childhood home. #books #literature

For more about the book, take a listen to this History of Literature Podcast episode in which @jackewilson.bsky.social talks to Phillip Lopate, author of A Washington Irving Sketchbook. #books #literature @princetonupress.bsky.social

"Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practise." – Samuel Johnson #botd For more about Johnson's life and work, listen to this episode from the archives! #books #literature @livunipress.bsky.social