Writing by Topic: Literature

“Finding the Poetry in Walt Whitman’s Newly Rediscovered Health Advice” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 2, 2016)
“Some Delightfully Scatological and Cruel Nursery Rhymes, From the Oldest Surviving Book of Them” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 11, 2016)
“Poe’s Only Bestseller as a Living Author Was This Schoolbook About Seashells” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 14, 2015)
“Jack London’s Candid 1903 Advice to Writers Trying to Get Into Print” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 20, 2015)
“The Books Virginia Colonists Were Buying in the Decade Before the Revolution” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 24, 2015)
“The Two-Page Plot Outline a Writer of the Hardy Boys Series Used to Crank Out a Book” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 13, 2015)
“Delightful 17th-Century Traveling Library Packs 40 Volumes Into One” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 11, 2014)
“A Melancholy List of Edgar Allan Poe’s Debts, From His Bankruptcy Petition of 1842” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 3, 2014)
“Whaling Ship Crew List Shows Melville Embarking on a Journey That Inspired Moby-Dick” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 27, 2014)
“A School Progress Report for the Brontë Sisters” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 22, 2014)
“Jane Austen’s Collection of Critical Feedback From Her (Sometimes Harsh) Friends and Family” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 18, 2014)
“The Sniffy, Scandalized Letter That Sealed the UK Government’s Ban of Ulysses” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 12, 2014)
“A Jazz Age New York Bohemian Dinner, In List Form” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 22, 2014)
“The Recommendation Letter Ralph Waldo Emerson Wrote for a Job-Hunting Walt Whitman” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 9, 2014)
“Memo Evaluating Possible Screenwriters for Gone with the Wind Is Frank on the Subject of Faulkner” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 23, 2014)
“A Peek Inside the Mother-Daughter Collaboration That Brought Us the Little House Series” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 21, 2014)
“Mark Twain’s Recommended Reading for Young People” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 11, 2014)
“Virginia Poe’s Sad Acrostic Valentine for Edgar Allan” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 13, 2014)
“The Creepy, Beautiful ‘Blood Book’ Made By A Scrapbooking Victorian Gentleman” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 31, 2013)
“Two of Emily Dickinson’s First Drafts, Scrawled on Old Envelopes” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 28, 2013)
“George Bernard Shaw’s Wry Answers to a Journalist’s Questionnaire About God” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, October 16, 2013)
“Seeds of Lovecraft’s ‘Mountains of Madness,” in His Terrifying, Tightly-Packed Notes” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, August 28, 2013)
“Pages from Hemingway’s Baby Books” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 23, 2013)
“A Wise Letter of Advice for Young Magazine Editors, 1945” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 22, 2013)
“A Coded Postcard From a Poet Headed to the Somme” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, July 2, 2013)
“E.E. Cummings’ Colorful, Imaginative Childhood Drawings” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 17, 2013)
“A Teenage Emily Dickinson’s Careful Collection of Dried Flowers” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, June 4, 2013)
“On His Birthday, a Short and Sweet Walt Whitman Poem About Being 71” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 31, 2013)
“A Few of Stella Adler’s Notes on Tennessee Williams’ Female Characters” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 30, 2013)
“‘A Terrible Evil’: Edgar Allan Poe Writes About His Wife’s Illness and Death” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 23, 2013)
“‘God Sleepeth Not’: Helen Keller’s Blistering Letter to Book-Burning German Students” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, May 16, 2013)
“Vonnegut Volunteers for the JFK Campaign, 1960” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 29, 2013)
“Bram Stoker’s Ever-Evolving List of Characters for Dracula” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, April 23, 2013)
“George Bernard Shaw’s Polite but Firm Autoreply Postcard for Unsolicited Mail” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 28, 2013)
“Russell Banks’ Real-Time Notes on Adjusting to the Word Processor” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 19, 2013)
“A Teenaged Charlotte Bronte’s Tiny Little Romance” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, March 13, 2013)
“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Wants Nothing To Do With Your Proust Questionnaire” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, February 21, 2013)
“F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Letter to a Fellow Author: Compliments, Criticism, and Applejack” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 31, 2013)
“‘F is for Fugitive’: A Fantastic 1864 Children’s Book About the Evil of Slavery” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 24, 2013)
“Mark Twain Draws His Self-Portrait” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 23, 2013)
“Emily Dickinson Scrawled Her Poems on These Tiny Scraps of Paper” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 15, 2013)
“Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Husband Claims His Own Little House” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, January 7, 2013)
“A Get-Well Pictogram From Hemingway’s WWI Drinking Buddies” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, December 4, 2012)
“Kurt Vonnegut’s 1967 Advice to a New Teacher at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop” (Slate‘s The Vault blog, November 20, 2012)

Everywhere Else

“The ‘Childhood’s End ‘ Miniseries is a Waste of One of Sci-Fi’s Greatest Tropes” (Slate‘s Future Tense blog, December 14, 2015)
“When Smartphones Attack” (review of Alena Graedon’s The Word Exchange) (Slate Book Review, April 9, 2014)
“How Janet Malcolm Turns Emily Dickinson’s Poetry Into Visual Art” (Slate‘s Browbeat blog, January 23, 2014)
“The Fantastical Allure of the Space Whale” (Lapham’s Quarterly‘s Roundtable blog, July 18, 2013)
“Teaching the Hunger Games in the Undergraduate American Studies Classroom” (Blog of the American Studies Journal, June 22, 2012)
“Young and Hot: Saci Lloyd’s The Carbon Diaries” (Songbirds and Satellites, September 6, 2011)
“Deep in the Wonder Book of Knowledge” (Songbirds and Satellites, July 21, 2011)
“Being a Kid After the Bomb” (Songbirds and Satellites, October 29, 2010)
“The Skinned Trilogy on the Market: Teenage Robots and ‘Humanity’s Future'” (Songbirds and Satellites, September 27, 2010)

Back to Writing Menu