Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) has long been one of the most famous - and most polarizing - figures in modernism. Was she a trailblazing genius? Or a literary charlatan? Her bestselling memoir of 1933,...
In Puritan New England, a young man leaves Faith, his wife, to go into the forest to meet the Devil. It's a story "as deep as Dante," said Herman Melville. In this episode, Jacke reads "Young Goodm...
What do we talk about when we talk about ancient Romans? For many of us, it's typically a fairly narrow slice of history: the toga-clad figures of Cicero and Caesar, perhaps, as their republic shad...
After the publication of her debut novel Wuthering Heights in December of 1847, Emily Brontë - still writing under her pen name Ellis Bell - joined Currer and Acton Bell (her sisters Charlotte and ...
“A sonnet,” said the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, “is a moment’s monument.” But who invented the sonnet? Who brought it to prominence? How has it changed over the years? And why does this for...
Stephen Mitchell has translated or adapted some of the world's most beautiful and spiritually rich texts, including The Gospel According to Jesus, The Book of Job, Gilgamesh, Tao Te Ching, Bha...
In this holiday-themed episode, a sentimental Jacke takes a look at Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843), and the creation of Ebeneezer Scrooge. A version of this episode first air...
Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece The Godfather routinely tops lists of the greatest films ever made - and when it doesn't, it's often because its sequel, The Godfather II, has replaced it. In thi...
How well can we know someone through the objects they encountered? In this episode, Jacke talks to Kathryn Sutherland, Senior Research fellow at St. Anne's College, Oxford, about her new book Jane ...
In 1949, American critic Lionel Trilling, writing in the New Yorker, was quick to recognize the achievement of George Orwell's new novel. "[P]rofound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating," he said. ...
Did you think we already knew everything there was to know about Virginia Woolf? Think again! In this episode, Jacke talks to scholar and editor Urmila Seshagiri about The Life of Violet: Three Ear...
At the start of Shakespeare's famous tragedy, King Lear promises to divide his kingdom based on his daughters’ professions of love, but he portions it out before hearing all of their answers. For N...
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was born into relative obscurity and died in mysterious circumstances at the age of 29. And yet, somehow this ambitious cobbler's son brought about a spectacular exp...
When Jacke started the podcast in 2015, he decided to privilege books that were at least fifty years old. (Longtime listeners will know he's made a few exceptions, but for the most part, that's bee...
Charlotte Brontë wasn't born the eldest child, but she was thrust into a leadership role at the age of ten, as the Brontë children dealt with the tragic deaths of their mother and two eldest sister...
In September 2022, a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Jîna Amini, died after being beaten by police officers who arrested her for not adhering to the Islamic Republic’s dress code. Her death galvanized t...
It's the 750th episode of the History of Literature, and what better way to celebrate than to talk some Hemingway with repeat guest Mark Cirino? In this episode, Jacke talks to Mark about Hemingway...
When Hamlet, in his famous soliloquy, pondered the "dread of something after death, / the undiscovered country," he noted that such thoughts "puzzles the will." (Earlier editions of the play had th...
Katherine Mansfield's writing, said Virginia Woolf, "was the only writing I was ever jealous of." In this episode, Jacke talks to author Gerri Kimber about Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life, which...
Dmitry Ivanovich Khvostov (1757-1835) might be the worst poet who ever lived. Pathologically prolific and delusional dedicated to a craft for which he had no talent, he continued to write and publi...
