74 Ways Characters Die in Shakespeare’s Plays Shown in a Handy Infographic: From Snakebites to Lack of Sleep

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In the grad­u­ate depart­ment where I once taught fresh­men and sopho­mores the rudi­ments of col­lege Eng­lish, it became com­mon prac­tice to include Shakespeare’s Titus Andron­i­cus on many an Intro to Lit syl­labus, along with a view­ing of Julie Taymor’s flam­boy­ant film adap­ta­tion. The ear­ly work is thought to be Shakespeare’s first tragedy, cob­bled…

Aldous Huxley to George Orwell: My Hellish Vision of the Future is Better Than Yours (1949)

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In 1949, George Orwell received a curi­ous let­ter from his for­mer high school French teacher.

Orwell had just pub­lished his ground­break­ing book Nine­teen Eighty-Four, which received glow­ing reviews from just about every cor­ner of the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. His French teacher, as it hap­pens, was none oth­er than Aldous Hux­ley,…

You Can Now See the Parthenon Without Scaffolding for the First Time in 200 Years

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If you’ve made the jour­ney to Athens, you prob­a­bly took the time to vis­it its most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tion, the Acrop­o­lis. On that mon­u­ment-rich hill, you more than like­ly paid spe­cial atten­tion to the Parthenon, the ancient tem­ple ded­i­cat­ed to the city’s name­sake, the god­dess Athena Parthenos. But no mat­ter how much time you spent…

The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 Theories on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

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One of my very first acts as a new New York­er many years ago was to make the jour­ney across three bor­oughs to Wood­lawn Ceme­tery in the Bronx. My pur­pose: a pil­grim­age to Her­man Melville’s grave. I came not to wor­ship a hero, exact­ly, but—as Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Angela O’Donnell writes—“to…

How Did The World Get So Ugly?: Then Versus Now

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More than a few of us might be inter­est­ed in the oppor­tu­ni­ty to spend a day in Vic­to­ri­an Lon­don. But very few of us indeed who’ve ever read, say, a Charles Dick­ens nov­el would ever elect to live there. “Lon­don’s lit­tle lanes are charm­ing now,” says Shee­han Quirke, the host of the video above,…