Episodes

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...

From the dramatic trains of Anna Karenina to the wide-open roads of Jack Kerouac, getting around has always played a central role in literature. But not all means of transportation are equal! In this lighthearted episode of t...

In Part 2 of our look at great literary genres, Jacke probes the development of science fiction, from ancient Greek travels to the moon to the amazing stories of the twentieth century. Along the way, he chooses four candidate...

Jacke takes a look at F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatsby (1925), which has been called by one newspaper "the American masterwork, the finest work of fiction by any of this country's writers." But what makes i...

Jacke starts a new Thursday Theme with a look at genre fiction. First up: Romance novels! Every year, over a billion dollars are spent on these books about love and relationships and...well, what else do we consider fundament...

Jacke takes a look at the life and works of Jean Rhys (1890-1979), whose masterpiece Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), reimagined Jane Eyre from the point of view of "the madwoman in the attic," and still stands as one of the seminal...

In this special Halloween episode, Jacke and Evie take a look at Edgar Allan Poe's great revenge story, "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), written when Poe was destitute and in the depths of despair. Enjoy! Help support the sh...

George Orwell (1903-1950) was one of the twentieth century's great literary figures. An English novelist, who also excelled at essays and journalism, he fought all his life against injustice, snobbery, hypocrisy, deception (i...

In 1965, the critic Joseph Wood Krutch studied the available evidence and came to a surprising conclusion. "Edgar Allan Poe," he wrote, "invented the detective story in order that he might not go mad." Arthur Conan Doyle, a m...

Professor Richard Bradford, author of the new biography The Man Who Wasn't There: A Life of Ernest Hemingway , joins Jacke to talk about Hemingway's uneasy relationship with the truth. RICHARD BRADFORD is Research Professor i...

He was "the king of poets," said Rimbaud, "a true God." T. S. Eliot called him a deformed Dante and said, “I am an English poet of American origin who learnt his art under the aegis of Baudelaire and the Baudelairian lineage ...

Authors Stephanie Kent and Logan Smalley join Jacke to talk about their new book for book lovers, The Call Me Ishmael Phone Book: An Interactive Guide to Life-Changing Books . If you love books, and talking about books, and p...

Evie Lee, a Vice President of the Literature Supporters Club, joins Jacke for a look at Poe's classic doppelgänger story, "William Wilson" (1839). Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/sho...

It's another much-anticipated, often-requested Mike Palindrome Solo Episode! In this special installment of The History of Literature Podcast, Jacke turns the keys over to Mike Palindrome, President of the Literature Supporte...

In 1843, Edgar Allan Poe, desperate for money and terrified that his wife was about to die, "became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity." Fueled by alcohol and despair, he fell into "fits of absolute unconsciousnes...

Robin Lithgow spent her life immersed in the performing arts, including a childhood in the theater and decades spent as an educator and arts administrator. But it wasn't until she read a little-known work by Erasmus that she ...

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695) was born in Mexico or, as it was known then, New Spain. She was a poet, a philosopher, a dramatist, a scholar, a poet, and a nun, known in her time as the "Tenth Muse" and to later genera...