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Hugh Thomson / Hulton Archive / Getty What Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Teaches Readers
The author frequently satirized those with bad literary habits—and, in her novels, gave audiences a model for how to read well.
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AP What Flannery O'Connor's College Journal Reveals
The brief diary shows an aspiring writer struggling to overcome doubt and anxiety.
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Library of Congress Why Walt Whitman Called America the ‘Greatest Poem’
The 19th-century writer believed that the power of poetry and democracy came from an ability to make a unified whole out of disparate parts.
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20th Century Fox Jane Eyre and the Invention of the Self
Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel helped introduce the idea of the “modern individual”—a surprisingly radical concept for readers at the time.
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AP / Kara Gordon / The Atlantic When T.S. Eliot Invented the Hipster
The original cuffed-trouser urbanite on the hunt for authenticity—and undercutting it with his own self-consciousness—was J. Alfred Prufrock.
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Shannon Stapleton/Reuters What's Lost in Not Recognizing Campus Religious Groups
California State University's recent decision to strip InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapters of their school affiliation undermines its ability to teach pluralism.
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Francisco Osorio/Flickr 'Empathetically Correct' Is the New Politically Correct
The movement for "trigger warnings" in college classrooms is part of a troubling trend toward protecting people from their own individual sensitivities.
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AP Why Shakespeare Belongs In Prison
The incarcerated may be the Bard's ideal modern audience.
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Penguin Books I Learned Everything I Needed to Know About Marriage From Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen’s classic is 200 years old, but longtime spouses and relationship experts alike stand by the principles it presents.
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The New, Old Way to Tell Stories: With Input From the Audience
New "transmedia" works like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries let viewers participate in their stories via Twitter and Facebook, but multi-platform storytelling dates back as far as 1740.
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How Reading Makes Us More Human
A debate has erupted over whether reading fiction makes human beings more moral. But what if its real value consists in something even more fundamental?
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'You Ain't Ruined': How Thomas Hardy Took On Victorian-Era Purity Culture
The novelist and poet's writing pushed back against the idea that a woman's virtue is tied to her virginity.
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Why Are People in Malawi So Hungry?
How climate change has wreaked havoc on an otherwise tranquil nation.
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Why I Support the Common Core Reading Standards
This English professor thinks the program's approach to reading could fix the problems she sees among her college students.
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Cliff DesPeaux / Reuters The Case for Getting Married Young
It can be beneficial to make marriage the cornerstone, rather than the capstone, of your adult life.
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Before 'We Saw Your Boobs': The Sexism and Satire War From 1732
Jonathan Swift described the horrors of discovering that women poop—and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu responded in bitingly funny fashion.
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The End of Women's History Month
Women's past accomplishments (and failures) deserve to be studied, appreciated, criticized, and otherwise actively engaged—not passively cheered in a banal annual celebration.
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The 'Always' and 'Never' Life of Sylvia Plath
"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time," she wrote in 'The Bell Jar,' "then I'm neurotic as hell."
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What Maya Angelou Means When She Says 'Shakespeare Must Be a Black Girl'
"The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you—black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight."
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The Pill: Contraceptive or Abortifacient?
It's an important distinction, both linguistically and scientifically.
