The History of Literature

Fan favorite Margot Livesey returns to the History of Literature to discuss her new novel, The Boy in the Field, and to help Jacke choose the greatest writers in Scotland's history.  MARGOT LIVESEY is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Flight of Gemma Hardy, The House on Fortune Street, Banishing Verona, Eva Moves the Furniture, The Missing World, Criminals, and Homework. Her...

The "Forgotten Women of Literature" series continues with a look at Aemilia Bassano Lanyer (1569-1645), the first Englishwoman to publish a volume of poetry, the protofeminist Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, which tells the story of Christ's crucifixion from a woman's perspective. In addition to her many accomplishments and incredible life story, Lanyer has tantalizingly close connections to William Sha...

The History of Literature Podcast presents "Copperopolis," written and performed by Tommy Orange, and produced by Storybound, a radio theater podcast. PLUS Jacke Lonelyhearts takes a look at the personal ads in The New York Review of Books. Tommy Orange is faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA program. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was b...

Cai Yan (Wenji) (c. 178 - c. 250?) was the daughter of Cai Yong, one of the most famous scholars of the Han Dynasty. After being widowed at a young age, Cai Wenji was abducted by a nomadic tribe, where she was forced to marry a chieftain and bear his children. The tragedy of her life story, and the songs of lament that have been attributed to her, combine the art of noble suffering with the powerf...

Ovid (43 BCE - 17 or 18 AD) was one of the most successful poets in the Roman Empire--until he was banished from Rome by Augustus himself. What led to his exile? What had he written, and how might it have offended the emperor? In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the author of The Art of Love, Metamorphoses, and many other works. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyoflitera...

Jacke and special guest Charles Halton take a look at the poetry of Enheduanna (2286-2252 BC), a high priestess in ancient Mesopotamia who is the earliest known poet whose name has been recorded. Charles Halton (Ph. D., Hebrew Union College) is the co-author of Women's Writing of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Anthology of the Earliest Female Authors. He is currently the managing editor of Marginalia, a...

Jacke Wilson and the History of Literature Podcast present a special guest episode from the Storybound project. Storybound is a radio theater program designed for the podcast age. Hosted by Jude Brewer and with original music composed for each episode, the podcast features the voices of today’s literary icons reading their essays, poems, and fiction. In this episode, Diksha Basu reads an excerpt f...

In the fourth and final installment of A Month of Shakespearean Sonnets, Jacke takes a look at two sonnets from the Dark Lady sequence, Sonnet 129 ("Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame") and Sonnet 130 ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"). Listen to the Shakespeare whom poet Don Paterson described as giving us "a terrific display of self-directed fury, raging away in the little cage...

The vast majority of book reviews are informative and genteel. What books get that treatment, and why? Jacke and Mike take a look at the some of the most savage book reviews of all time. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejack...

Continuing the "Shakespeare on Thursdays" theme for August, Jacke takes a look at Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds"), another one of Shakespeare's most beloved and well known sonnets. What does the poem say about love? How does it fit into the world of weddings? And what does it have for readers today? Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/...

In 1922, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), an American living in England, published The Waste Land, widely viewed as perhaps the greatest and most iconic poem of the twentieth century. Virginia Woolf recognized its power immediately, praising it for its "great beauty and force of phrase: symmetry and tensity." And yet, as nearly a hundred years' worth of readers and critics have found, its tangle of cultura...

In 1870, the 42-year-old Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) told his wife that he "wanted to write a novel about the fall of a society woman in the highest Petersburg circles, and...to tell the story of the woman and her fall without condemning her." The result was his novel Anna Karenina (1877), which is widely viewed as one of the pinnacles of world literature. In this episode, Jacke is join...

Novelist Finola Austin joins Jacke for a discussion of her new novel Bronte's Mistress, which provides a fascinating new perspective on one of literature's most famous families.  FINOLA AUSTIN, also known as the Secret Victorianist on her award-winning blog, is an England-born, Northern Ireland-raised, Brooklyn-based historical novelist and lover of the 19th century. By day, she works in digital a...

Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) was a naturalist, a conservationist, and a highly successful children's book author and illustrator, whose stories of Peter Rabbit and other anthropomorphized animals have sold more than 150 million copies in at least 35 languages. But who was Beatrix Potter? What kind of childhood did she have? How did she, as an independent-minded artist and businessperson, navigate th...

In this episode, Jacke takes a look at the life and works of French author Stendhal (1783-1842), whose innovative novels The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma made him one of the greatest and most influential novelists of all time. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson...

The History of Literature presents some content from another Podglomerate podcast, Storybound. In this episode from Storybound's first season, author Mitchell S. Jackson reads from his memoir, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family, with sound design and original music composed by Zane featuring Stephanie Strange. STORYBOUND is a radio theater program designed for the podcast age. In each...

Novelist and screenwriter Tom Perrotta joins Jacke for a discussion of his blue collar New Jersey background, the cultural shock of attending Yale University, and the profound impact that Raymond Carver's first collection of short stories, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, had on him as an aspiring young writer trying to find his place in the world. TOM PERROTTA is the bestselling author of nine...

As the Black Death swept through the city of Florence, Italian poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) began writing his classic tale of survival and revelry. The Decameron (1349-1353) tells the story of ten individuals who have retreated to a country villa to avoid the disease. While in this state of self-quarantine, they embark upon a fortnight of storytelling: ten stories each for ten d...

Friend of the podcast Evie Lee joins Jacke to take a look at Joyce Carol Oates's classic short story, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" (1966). NOTE TO LISTENERS: This episode contains disturbing descriptions of an attempted abduction by a serial killer. Please exercise discretion in deciding whether to listen. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/sho...

Jacke takes a look at the astonishing story of Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, whose own father (who was born into slavery before becoming a four-star general in Napoleon's army) led a life as adventurous as any fictional character. Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at hi...

Author Lara Prescott joins Jacke to talk about her novel The Secrets We Kept, which is based on the incredible but true story of the CIA's efforts to use a novel (Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago) as part of its Cold War battle against the Soviet Union. LARA PRESCOTT is the author of The Secrets We Kept, an instant New York Times bestseller and a Hello Sunshine x Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick....

The fourth part of a three-part episode run! Jacke takes the advice of a listener and adds William Faulkner's "Dry September" (1931) to the Baldwin-Faulkner consideration. NOTE FOR LISTENERS: This story (and our discussion of it) contains disturbing references to sexual violence, racial slurs, and race-based hate crimes. Please exercise discretion in listening or playing for others. Help support t...

Sputnik! Cuba! Glasnost and perestroika! In this follow-up to the very popular England vs. France literary battle royal, Jacke and Mike choose up sides and imagine the Cold War being fought by each nation's greatest authors. Enjoy! Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by fo...

"We can never get enough of nature," wrote Henry David Thoreau in 1854. "I suppose that what in other men is religion is in me love of nature." A century and a half later, author Nina Shengold left her desk behind for her own journey into the natural world, following a plan to walk along the Ashokan Reservoir in upstate New York every day for a year. When she returned home after each outing she re...

As with Santa's reindeer or Snow White's seven dwarves, we all know the phrase "Seven Deadly Sins" even if we struggle to remember the exact list. But who came up with this concept? And who decided that Pride, Envy, Wrath, Lust, Sloth, Greed, and Gluttony were the seven qualities deserving of this ignominious honor? In this episode, Jacke and Mike take a look at the Seven Deadly Sins and how they...