Episodes

In 1819, John Keats wrote a letter to his brother George and his sister-in-law Giorgiana, who had recently moved from London to America. In the letter, Keats included a poem, which he introduced as "the first and the only one...

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...

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 ho...

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 ...

In our last episode, we examined the evidence of Jane Austen's 1795-96 dalliance with her "Irish friend," the gentlemanlike (but impoverished) young law student Tom Lefroy. Intriguingly, she began writing Pride and Prejudice,...

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 bal...

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 t...

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 iss...

In 1971, critic J.L. Styan wrote: "In The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov consummated his life’s work with a poetic comedy of exquisite balance." In this episode, Jacke and Mike take a look at Chekhov's final play, including a draft ...

Jacke talks to Amyra León, author of the new book Concrete Kids , about her background, her artistic projects, and how influences like James Baldwin, Frida Kahlo, and Frederick Douglass helped make her the person she is today...

Following our last episode on Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jacke takes a look at The Scarlet Letter (1850), which tells the story of a 17th-century New England woman (Hester Prynne) struggling to maintain her dignity in spite of a sh...

In this episode, Jacke discusses the life and works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), including his major themes, the distinction he drew between "romances" and "novels," his friendship with Herman Melville, his childhood i...

It's still Chekhov month! In this episode, Jacke sets the table for the History of Literature's analysis of The Cherry Orchard (1904) with a look back, a look ahead, and a preview of the play's major themes. Help support the ...

In the third installment of Chekhov's Four Major Plays, Jacke takes a look at Three Sisters , which tells the story of three sisters living in a provincial capital and longing for Moscow. Help support the show at patreon.com/...

In this holiday-themed episode, a sentimental Jacke takes a look at Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843), and the creation of Ebeneezer Scrooge. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/...

In the second installment of our look at Chekhov's four major plays, Jacke takes a look at Uncle Vanya (1898), the story of an estate manager struggling to make sense of his life. Help support the show at patreon.com/literatu...

Ever wonder who wrote the first play in the North American colonies? Or who was the first published African American poet? Or what year it was when an Arab American first published a novel in the United States? Or who wrote t...

In 1896, the 36-year-old Chekhov suffered one of the worst experiences of his life, when his play The Seagull was performed in front of an audience so hostile that one of the lead actresses lost her voice. Two years later, a ...

Since its first appearance, Marcel Proust's magnum opus In Search of Lost Time has delighted and confounded editors, readers, and critics. Published in seven volumes over a fourteen-year period, the enormous novel has general...

Author and notorious New York Post columnist Michael Riedel joins Jacke to discuss his new book, Singular Sensation: The Triumph of Broadway , which explores the world of big-budget Broadway musicals in the 1990s. Along the w...

In her lifetime, Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was known as a benevolent and capable leader, a protectress of free thinkers, and one of the most intelligent women in France. She was also the producer of great literature, ...

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a professor, academic essay, and professional linguist - but the world knows him best as the author of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). In this episode, Jacke ...

Herodotus (c. 484 - 425? BCE) has been called both "The Father of History" and "The Father of Lies." His accounts of the ancient world, including a deep dive into all aspects of geography, biology, and culture (among many oth...

Jacke continues the Thursday Theme for November with a look at a genre that began in the nineteenth century and nearly dominated the twentieth: the Western. What happened to western fiction? What was a "classic western" and w...