This year Yale University Press published Samuel Johnson, a diverse and accessible selected works of eighteenth-century Britain’s preeminent man of letters. The following excerpt is a section from one of Johnson’s pseudonymous essays in the publication Rambler. This quality of looking forward into futurity seems the unavoidable condition of a
John Donatich— The recent passing of Theodore Margellos sent me to my bookshelf to look at the Margellos World Republic of Letters volumes lined up side by side. Together, they form a considerable library, with Yale and Margellos imprints on their spines. These books are among my most prized possessions.
José María Pérez Fernández and Edward Wilson-Lee— A few days ago, a subsecretary in the newly-installed Italian government led by Mario Draghi tweeted out to followers an inspiring message which showed the continuing relevance of the great poet Dante to our present day: “Chi si ferma è perduto, mille anni
Next month, Yale University Press is pleased to publish Voices of the Lost by Hoda Barakat, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth, a novel that weaves together a series of devastating confessions about life in contemporary Arab society. We sat down with Hoda to discuss the relationship between literature and
Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen— When in 1656 Rembrandt was forced to declare bankruptcy, a full inventory was made of all of his remaining possessions. Among the paintings, furniture and household goods at the house on the Breestraat, were only twenty-two books. By this time Rembrandt, one of the
George Prochnik— What’s life without glory, blazing love affairs, and apple tarts? That’s to say, what is life without song and true liberation for all? Heinrich Heine at thirteen, diminutive and dashing with wavy chestnut hair and a passion for play, charged into the crowd beneath the linden trees of
Alberto Manguel— There are characters whose name reveals their skin color (Snow White), their ability (Spiderman), their size (Thumbelina). Others, their dress. A short blood-colored cape defines the adventurous girl dreamt up by Charles Perrault towards the end of the seventeenth century. She has a whiff of the guileless temptress,
The latest work from Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, Invisible Ink is a spellbinding tale of memory and its illusions. Private detective Jean Eyben receives an assignment to locate a missing woman, the mysterious Noëlle Lefebvre. While the case proves fruitless, the clues Jean discovers along the way continue to haunt him.
Nicholas Delbanco— I have in front of me a black, spring-loaded binder titled ART. A smaller version of the title has been pasted on the spine. The sturdy pebbled folder measures 11 ½ by 9 ½ inches, and the whole is an inch thick. Inside are fifty-two pages (one for
Karl Ove Knausgaard— I knew why Munch painted, I knew it so well that I could articulate it with a single sentence. And it resembles the sentence spoken by the author with his sweater tucked into his trousers. I write because I am going to die. I paint because I