One of the most interesting literary trends in recent years has been the success of various imprints specialising in reissues – lesser-known or neglected books given a new lease of life by publishers with a flair for curation. Virago Press and Persephone Books have been doing sterling work in this area for many years by […]
Some of My Favourite Books from NYRB Classics
Born February 11, 1917, Sidney Sheldon refined the architecture of the modern page-turner. His lean, cinematic prose prioritized speed, suspense, and clarity, shaping commercial English fiction worldwide. By perfecting cliffhangers and momentum-driven chapters, he engineered narrative as propulsion—storytelling calibrated for global readability and relentless anticipation.
Birth of Sidney Sheldon (1917–2007) – The Architect of Commercial Narrative Velocity
Born February 4, 1805, William Harrison Ainsworth turned English history into mass reading. Through serialized romances, spectacle, and vivid prose, he fused fact with folklore, teaching English to narrate the past as drama. His novels democratized historical storytelling, shaping how generations encountered history not as scholarship, but as shared imaginative experience.
Birth of William Harrison Ainsworth (1805–1882) – The Novelist Who Turned English History into Popular Narrative
Born in 1901, Rosamond Lehmann refined English prose to capture emotional precision and feminine interior life. Her novels traced love, loss, and consciousness with rare psychological clarity, granting women’s inner worlds literary authority. Lehmann reshaped modern English fiction by proving that emotional nuance, hesitation, and vulnerability were not weaknesses, but structural strengths.
Birth of Rosamond Lehmann (1901–1990) – The Novelist Who Gave English Emotional Precision and Feminine Interior Voice
Hugo von Hofmannsthal reshaped how English modernism understands the failure of language. Through translation and criticism his work taught English to name silence fragmentation and interior doubt. He helped writers and scholars confront moments where speech falters meaning fractures and modern consciousness begins.
Birth of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) – The Writer Who Taught English Modernism to Listen for Silence
I discovered the mid-century American poet Weldon Kees (1914-1955) quite by chance, which is the best way to discover a poet. As I wrote in a 2015 essay on Henri Coulette (1927-1988), about whom I’ll have some news to share soon, “[a] photograph of Kees—neatly trimmed moustache, neatly tailored gray flannel suit, right arm bent […]
Dana Gioia resurrects Weldon Kees (but not, alas, Boris the parrot)
Through Jun Takami English learned restraint. His Shōwa era fiction entered the language by translation teaching it to render interior life without spectacle. Ethical pressure illness and silence shaped a prose of hesitation where meaning rests in understatement and moral ambiguity rather than declaration or revolt.
Birth of Jun Takami (1907–1965) – The Writer Who Entered English Through Psychological Precision
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