Episodes Posts

The second half of the twentieth century was marked by an extreme increase in America's prison population, from roughly 250,000 inmates in 1940 to well over two million by 2008. At the same time, American readers were devouring mysteries, thrillers,…

At the time of Washington Irving's death, he was the most famous and widely praised American writer of his or any other era. But his reputation soon dwindled, and today he's known primarily as the author of just two stories ("The Legend of Sleepy Ho…

In Episode 823. United States President Abraham Lincoln and his assassin John Wilkes Booth were both deeply immersed in Shakespeare's works. And yet, the conclusions they reached about how best to end tyranny — a feature of both Macbeth and Julius C…

Henry David Thoreau was not a traditional Christian, and yet he was a deeply, profoundly religious man. In Episode 822, Jacke talks to Lydia Willsky-Ciollo about her book Wildness: Henry David Thoreau and the Making of an American Theology, which de…

In Episode 820, Jacke talks to Sonja Tiernan about her book Eva Gore-Booth: Irish Radical Poet, Rebel, and Reformer, which tells the story of a young woman who cast aside her aristocratic origins to champion the causes of barmaids, circus performers…

In Episode 819, Jacke talks to biographer Glenda Norquay (Robert Louis Stevenson: A Critical Life) about the amazing life of Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish author of classic works like Kidnapped and Treasure Island. His works are great reads,…

In Episode 818, Jacke talks to author James Bailey about his critically acclaimed biography Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark. James and Jacke cover not only many of Spark's best known works, including The Prime of Miss Jean B…

In Episode 817, Jacke gets ready for the release of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, the rare instance of a summer blockbuster based on a literary classic, with some help from classics scholars Daniel Mendelsohn (The Odyssey, An Odyssey: A Father, A Son…

In Episode 816, Jacke talks to David Womersley about Jonathan Swift, the nature of satire, and The Cambridge Anniversary Edition of Gulliver's Travels, which Womersley edited. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of Literature at the Unive…

In Episode 815, as America turns 250, Jacke takes a look at the career and major works of Paddy Chayefsky, whose 1976 film Network is often praised for predicting the demise of television (and, perhaps, America itself). Thanks in part to beloved fi…

In Episode 814, Jacke talks to writer, editor, and translator Daniel Hahn (If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation), about his encounters with writers and actors who've engaged with Shakespeare's work in more than a hundred …

In Episode 813 of the History of Literature Podcast, Jacke talks to award-winning poet and biographer Fiona Sampson about her book Becoming George, which examines George Sand's iconoclasm and rehabilitates her as an intellectual and artistic giant.…

Why are we so fascinated by the ancient world? What can we find in the distant past that is recognizably human — and how do we grapple with the complicated and controversial issues that the past forces us to address?  In Episode 812, Jacke talks to…

The Harlem Renaissance, the great flowering of African American arts and culture in the early twentieth century, is hard to define but easy to admire. Coupled with the Great Migration, in which hundreds of thousands of Southern black workers moved t…