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Literature

Odysseus and Polyphemus (1896), by painter Arnold Böcklin, depicts Odysseus and his men escaping from the island of the Cyclops.

‘Odyssey’ Translator Emily Wilson Is Starting Over After Calling Christopher Nolan’s Blockbuster Film ‘Abysmal’

Nearly a decade after her acclaimed first translation was released, Wilson is taking a fresh approach to Homer’s ancient Greek epic

The statue was unvelied on August 14.

A New Statue Honors ‘Moby-Dick’ Author Herman Melville in the Massachusetts City Where His Whaling Adventures Began

The 7.5-foot-tall bronze artwork stands in the heart of historic New Bedford, the 19th-century whaling port that inspired the author’s famous 1851 novel

An early papyrus fragment from Homer's Odyssey, dated to roughly 285 to 250 B.C.E., is now on display in New York City.

You Can Now See One of the Oldest Surviving Copies of ‘The Odyssey’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The papyrus fragment contains three lines that don’t appear in standard modern-day translations of Homer’s epic poem

"Kiama Library" is stamped on the book's title page.

Cool Finds

This Library Book Was 150 Years Overdue. Fortunately for the Man Who Just Returned It, Librarians Won’t Be Enforcing a $20,000 Late Fee

“The Antiquities of Athens” had likely been missing from an Australian library since the 1870s. Staffers say its recovery is “an unlikely story of survival (of the book) and redemption (of the borrower)”

When did summer "beach reads" become a part of our culture? Book historian Donna Harrington-Lueker takes us back to mid-19th-century leisure.

The History of the Beach Read, From 19th-Century ‘Moral Debasement’ to BookTok

The still-popular genre got its start 150 years ago, when publishers profited off the rise of travel in the United States during an otherwise slow publishing season

One of the design proposals

It’s Nature vs. Culture as Europeans Vote on New Designs for Euro Banknotes That Pit Kingfishers Against Leonardo da Vinci

The European Central Bank released a shortlist of ten potential designs for a new series of printed banknotes, the first complete redesign since the Euro note was issued in 2002.

Odysseus and Polyphemus, Arnold Böcklin, 1896

Was There Ever an Original Version of ‘The Odyssey,’ and Do We Need to Worry About What Homer Would Think?

The earliest surviving fragments of the epic poem—the subject of Christopher Nolan’s latest Hollywood blockbuster—date back more than 2,000 years. But oral storytelling about a hero named Odysseus is much older

Actor Paul Newman lounges on a pool table reading Star Warriors in this ALA READ campaign poster. 

Vintage ‘READ’ Posters Adorning Libraries and Classrooms for Decades Go on Auction as the American Library Association Turns 150

Taylor Swift, Serena Williams and famous fictional characters lent their iconic faces to encourage people to pick up a book

A 1488 edition of the Odyssey, photographed by Naomi Wenger

The ‘Odyssey,’ One of the World’s Oldest Stories, Gets a Modern Spin With A.I.-Generated Audiobook Narration by the Voice Clone of an Oscar Winner

Meanwhile, other actors are pushing back against the use of artificial intelligence in creative projects, including through a new “human consent” registry tool

In 1847, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey were published together in three volumes.

The First Edition of Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ Contained Incorrect Page Numbers, Missing Punctuation and Three Misspellings of the Word ‘Heights’

The haunting story set against the Yorkshire moors would become one of the most renowned novels of the 19th century. Now, a rare first-edition copy is heading to auction

The author and abolitionist, surrounded by silhouette renderings of vignettes from her vivid, world-changing novel.

America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

Harriet Beecher Stowe Wrote a Work of Fiction That Seemed So Real That It Changed the History of the Country

To fight against slavery, the author collected true stories then picked up a pen and distilled them into “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”

A portrait of Fuller, inspired by her 1845 Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which argued for equality of the sexes. The book’s opening illustration featured mystical symbols of harmonizing opposites, including the Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail.

America at 250: The Revolutionary Spark

Born in 1810, Margaret Fuller Was Labeled a Child Prodigy. She Later Used Her Intellect to Ask Important Questions About Women’s Role in America

Her writing posed the novel premise: What does it mean to be a woman? Her early death meant she never saw the movement she inspired

Partial view of Eurasian blackbird, Missy Dunaway, acrylic ink on paper

Shakespeare Referenced Dozens of Bird Species in His Work. This Artist Has Made It Her Mission to Paint Them All

Missy Dunaway’s colorful illustrations combine natural history, folklore and literature to depict the Bard’s birds

The illuminated manuscript's illustrations contain precious metals.

See the Stunning Medieval Manuscript Telling Tales of King Arthur, in Ink and Polished Gold, That’s Headed to Auction

The manuscript was made by a skilled, anonymous artist between 1290 and 1310. It’s the oldest of only three privately owned Vulgate Cycle manuscripts

William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies

‘Lord of the Flies’ Comes to Television for the First Time in a New Miniseries. In the 1950s, the Now-Famous Novel Almost Never Got Published

Publishers rejected the original manuscript for “Lord of the Flies” many times, yet the story still sparks a buzz today. Author William Golding later won the Nobel Prize in Literature

Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends live in a case at the New York Public Library.

The Real Winnie-the-Pooh Lives at the New York Public Library. When Queen Camilla Visited the Bear, She Reunited Him With a Dear Friend

On a state visit to the United States this week, the queen of the United Kingdom became the first British royal to visit the library as she fulfilled a mission to complete the set of toys that Christopher Robin once owned

The page of the manuscript in Rome that contains “Caedmon’s Hymn”

Cool Finds

Researchers Discovered a Lost Copy of the Oldest English Poem, Composed by an Illiterate Cowherd More Than 1,300 Years Ago

This version of “Caedmon’s Hymn” shows how Old English evolved. It also features early use of a punctuation mark that readers of English take for granted today—the period—but not in the expected way

The papyrus fragment with a passage from Homer's Iliad

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Unearth a Papyrus Fragment From the ‘Iliad’ Tucked Inside the Wrappings of a 1,600-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy

The excerpt from Homer’s epic poem features his catalog of ships, a famous passage listing the Greek forces that sailed to Troy. It may be the first Greek literary text found in the context of mummification

The typewritten lyrics were found on a torn piece of paper measuring roughly eight by seven inches.

Cool Finds

Bob Dylan’s Original Typewritten Draft Lyrics for ‘I’m Not There’ Have Been Rediscovered After More Than Half a Century

For decades, eager fans could only hear the obscure song on bootleg vinyl recordings. The draft lyrics, which were found inside a first-edition copy of Allen Ginsberg poetry, just sold at auction for $6,800

In addition to 54 poems, John Keats wrote some three dozen love letters to his fiancée, Fanny Brawne. Joseph Severn painted this portrait of the poet in 1819.

Cool Finds

After a Poet’s Love Story Was Cut Short, His Letters Mysteriously Disappeared—Until Rare Book Dealers Acted on a Hunch

Eight letters that John Keats penned to his fiancée before his untimely death are “the literary find of a lifetime”

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