Books Essay

A Dream of a Writer

Peter Taylor’s stories reveal an artist immersed in the quotidian who rose to the complexities of the heart and psyche

By Ann Beattie | Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Remembering Bob Silvers

The legendary New York Review of Books editor knew everybody, had read everything, and oversaw every stage of what he published

By Garry Wills | Monday, June 5, 2017

Found in Translation

A poet learns how to feel and see and think and sound in the language of his adopted home

By Piotr Florczyk | Monday, March 6, 2017

The Gogol Notebook

Remembering Randall Jarrell’s passionate lectures on Russian literature and discovering the pangs of alienation that plagued the poet during his final years

By Angela Davis-Gardner | Monday, December 5, 2016

A Life Written in Invisible Ink

In her rebellious and much-celebrated poetry, Adrienne Rich both deciphered and created the feminist world she inhabited

By Sandra M. Gilbert | Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Living With Dante

A writer reflects on how the poet’s vision served as a vade mecum amid the horrors of the Holocaust

By Louis Begley | Monday, June 6, 2016

Inscriber’s Block

Just because you can write a book doesn’t mean you can sign one

By Ralph Keyes | Monday, February 29, 2016

A Radical Pessimist’s Priceless Patter

Dashiell Hammett took the detective story out of the parlor and into the street

By David Lehman | Monday, September 7, 2015

Reflections on Alexis de Tocqueville

What is the place of the artist in a democratic society?

By Saul Bellow | Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Last Works

Every writer eventually faces the question: Is there anything left to say?

By Roger Grenier | Monday, September 8, 2014

Patience, Practice, Perseverance

How Octavia E. Butler became a writer

By Lynell George | Thursday, September 14, 2023

Will the Real Vergil Please Stand Up?

Making sense of the life of a poet about whom we know so little

By Sarah Ruden | Thursday, August 17, 2023

The Friend Zone

Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas on what makes a marriage tick were downright radical for their time

By Robert Zaretsky | Sunday, February 19, 2023

Declassified

How genre-bending tales of espionage emerged from a childhood of pain, anger, and deception

By James Gibney | Thursday, December 8, 2022

A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré Edited by Tim Cornwell; Viking, 752 pp., $40

Freedom Tales

Long before the contentious school board fights of today, Lydia Maria Child tried to help America’s children understand their country’s racial transgressions