Episodes

Responding to a listener email, a heartbroken Jacke takes a close look at Emily Dickinson's astonishing poem "A Bird, came down the Walk." Additional listening suggestions: 120 The Astonishing Emily Dickinson 418 "Because I c...

The History of Literature Presents: Missing Pages

He was born Theodor Seuss Geisel in 1904, but in the next 87 years, the world came to know and love him by his pen name, Dr. Seuss. Best known for his more than 60 books for children, including The Cat in the Hat , How the Gr...

In our last episode, we looked at the decision by Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard to purchase a printing press and run it out of their home. What began as a hobby - a relief from the strains of writing - soon turned in...

Virginia Woolf has long been celebrated as a supremely gifted novelist and essayist. Less well known, but important to understanding her life and contributions to literature, are her efforts as a publisher. In the decades tha...

Is this the greatest man vs. nature story ever? Hard to say. But it just might be the purest . Kicking off a new HOL feature, producer Emma chooses a short story for Jacke to read and discuss - Jack London's classic "To Build...

"All you have to do is write one true sentence," Ernest Hemingway said in A Moveable Feast . "Write the truest sentence that you know." And so he did: the man wrote thousands of sentences, all in search of "truth" of some kin...

Very few writers have had the influence or importance of Langston Hughes (1902?-1967). Best known for poems like "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "I, Too," and "The Weary Blues," Hughes was also a widely read novelist, short sto...

It's a paradox that has bothered Shakespeare's fans for centuries: the man was as insightful into human beings as anyone whoever lived, and yet his own life is barely documented. This combination of literary genius plus biogr...

For years, we've enjoyed talking to writers about the books they love best. In this "best of" episode, we go deep into the archive for three of our favorites: Jim Shepard and his youthful discovery of Bram Stoker's Dracula ; ...

Since the first publication of his six-volume magnum opus, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Edward Gibbon (1734-1797) has been ranked among the greatest historians who ever lived. What made his work d...

In our last episode, Jacke looked at the life of celebrated Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), the widely acknowledged master of haiku. In this episode, Jacke looks deeper into the nature of Bashō's best works, organizin...

In addition to being what is probably the most widely used poetic form, haiku is almost certainly the most often misunderstood. In this episode, Jacke examines the life and works of Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), haiku's greatest ...

Born Tomáš Sträussler, in what was then Czechoslovakia, celebrated playwright Tom Stoppard (1937- ) became one of the best known British playwrights in the world. Known for his with and humor, his facility with language, and ...

Czech novelist Karel Čapek (1890-1938) might be best known as the pioneering science fiction writer who first coined the term "robot." But readers have long appreciated the transcendent humanity of his works. "There was no wr...

Jacke spends his birthday reflecting on Chicago film critic Roger Ebert (1942-2013), the Judd Apatow show Freaks and Geeks , and other literature-and-life topics. Enjoy! Additional listening suggestions: 421 HOL Goes to the M...

During his lifetime, Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) became famous for his prizewinning fiction and autobiographical works; his dedication to environmental causes; and his initiation of the creative writing program at Stanford Un...

Summertime! The season for watching blockbuster movies in arctic conditions, heart-pounding suspense flicks that heat the blood, and cool-breeze dramas that stir the soul. In this best-of episode, Jacke celebrates the summer ...

Very few novelists can match the ambition or output of French novelist Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850). A pioneer of the great nineteenth-century "realism" tradition, his novel sequence La Comédie Humaine presents a panoramic vi...

It's the Christina Rossetti episode! Jacke finally musters up the energy to finish what he started, and takes a look at one of the great poets of the Victorian era (and the creator of "Goblin Market," one of the strangest poe...

Because Jacke could not stop for the scheduled episode topics, a certain poem kindly stopped for him. Luckily it's one of the greatest poems of all time! It's by the 19th-century American genius Emily Dickinson, and it packs ...

It's one of the great mysteries in American history. The "lost colony" of Roanoke Island, where 120 or so men, women, and children living in the first permanent English settlement in North America simply disappeared, leaving ...

In his lifetime, the Romantic poet and engraver William Blake (1757-1827) was barely known and frequently misunderstood. Today, his genius is widely celebrated and his poems are some of the most famous in the English language...

As a devout and passionate religious observer, Victorian poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) lived a life that might seem, at first glance, as proper and tame. Even some of her greatest works, devotional poems and verses for ...