Hermione Lee

An Undisappearing Act

Diane Johnson’s restitutionary biography brings George Meredith’s first wife out of his shadow.

The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith: And Other Lesser Lives

by Diane Johnson, with an introduction by Vivian Gornick

December 3, 2020 issue

Marilynne Robinson; illustration by Hope Gangloff

Sympathy for the Devil

There is a profound issue of freedom at the core of Marilynne Robinson’s novels. Can we change our lives?

Jack

by Marilynne Robinson

October 22, 2020 issue

British warships arriving at Donegal Bay during the Irish Civil War, July 1922

Not Even Past

A Thousand Moons

by Sebastian Barry

May 28, 2020 issue

The Dark Side

Last Stories

by William Trevor

July 19, 2018 issue

The Mists of Time

Warlight

by Michael Ondaatje

May 24, 2018 issue

Remembering Bob Silvers

On the late editor of The New York Review

March 21, 2017

Doris Lessing and Jenny Diski, London, 1963

The Triumph of Jenny Diski

In Gratitude

by Jenny Diski

September 29, 2016 issue

A Poet Unlike Any Other

Often described as dotty, batty, silly, or odd, Stevie Smith can be celebrated as a major English poet of the 20th century

All the Poems

by Stevie Smith, edited and with an introduction by Will May

June 9, 2016 issue

The Threat to the Editorial Institute

March 10, 2016 issue

Alice Munro’s Magic

Her characters often have to decide what “home” means, and what to do with it when you have left it

Family Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995–2014

by Alice Munro

February 5, 2015 issue

John Updike, Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, 1987

The Charms of John Updike

He gave “the mundane its beautiful due”

Updike

by Adam Begley

The Collected Stories: Collected Early Stories, Collected Later Stories

by John Updike, edited by Christopher Carduff

May 8, 2014 issue

Willa Cather at the Cliff Palace, Mesa Verde, Colorado, 1915

Willa Cather: A Hidden Voice

On ‘The Selected Letters’

The Selected Letters of Willa Cather

edited by Andrew Jewell and Janis Stout

July 11, 2013 issue

Finding a Very Secret Self

New Ways to Kill Your Mother: Writers and Their Families

by Colm Tóibín

The Testament of Mary

by Colm Tóibín

January 10, 2013 issue

Joyce Carol Oates, Princeton, New Jersey, 1981

The Terrors of the Woman President

Joyce Carol Oates’s ‘Mudwoman’

Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

April 5, 2012 issue

Storms Over the Novel

The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts

by Milan Kundera, translated from the French by Linda Asher

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

by Jane Smiley

The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life

by Edward Mendelson

How Novels Work

by John Mullan

How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide

by John Sutherland

The Novel, Volume 1: History, Geography and Culture

edited by Franco Moretti

The Novel, Volume 2: Forms and Themes

edited by Franco Moretti

Nation & Novel: The English Novel from Its Origins to the Present Day

by Patrick Parrinder

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May 10, 2007 issue

Passionate Pilgrim

The Cruise of the Vanadis

by Edith Wharton, with photographs by Jonas Dovydenas

November 4, 2004 issue

Comic, Sad and Indefinite

Alone! Alone! Lives of Some Outsider Women

by Rosemary Dinnage

August 12, 2004 issue

The Unknown Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton: Collected Stories, 1891–1910

selected and with notes by Maureen Howard

Edith Wharton: Collected Stories, 1911–1937

selected and with notes by Maureen Howard

October 4, 2001 issue

On Eudora Welty (1909–2001)

September 20, 2001 issue

Tracking the Untrackable

Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer

Richard Holmes

Literary Lives: Biography and the Search for Understanding

David Ellis

Reflections on Biography

Paula R. Backscheider

April 12, 2001 issue