• Close up image of a large blueish buoy, engraved with images of people preparing fish.

Why You Should Read Allan Ramsay’s ‘The Gentle Shepherd’

What Scottish play, published in 1725, reached over 100 printings by 1800, was called ‘the noblest pastoral’ by Robert Burns, inspired more than forty paintings, more than ‘from the entire works of Chaucer, Defoe, Swift, Richardson, or Fielding’ (R. Altick, Paintings from Books), and was performed by amateur companies throughout Scotland as late as the end of the 19th century?

Q&A with Patrick O’Connor

Q. Tell us a bit about your book A. Cormac McCarthy, Philosophy and the Physics of the Damned is really a book about the importance of philosophy for literature. In it, I look at how one writer uses philosophy to…

The Importance of Place

By Jennifer Burek Pierce Place is central to John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and to the community of readers who love his work.  In both the novel and the movie versions of this story, visually distinctive places anchor…