By Suzanne Shumway 1. Mary Lamb (1764-1847), sister of the essayist, poet, and playwright Charles Lamb. In 1796, Charles checked himself into a private asylum and spent six weeks there, never dreaming that a few months later, his sister would fall victim to a madness so severe that she would […]
By Luna Gradinšćak There is one fact that I gladly used to mention in my notes, works and conversations. The first time I ever read that fact was in a phenomenal book by David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas. The book speaks about something that one day will be clear to all of […]
By Viola van de Sandt 1. He had no regrets. In a letter to fellow novelist Hugh Walpole, James wrote in 1913: ‘We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art . . . what we are talking about – & the only way to know it is […]
By Laura Linker Phillis Wheatley (1753-84), an eighteenth-century black slave taught to read by her owners, composed over 100 poems in her lifetime, many of them drawing on the Bible as a source of infallible authority. The first slave to publish a book, Wheatley often urges America to repent of […]