TODAY: In 1811, William Makepeace Thackeray, satrical novelist (Vanity Fair) and dour portrait sitter (above), is born.
- Why Jane Austen’s most mocked character is also her most subversive. | Literary Hub
- Why do con men (and women) make for such compelling characters? | Literary Hub
- Blood on the big screen: Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth didn’t actually kill people, but this Lady Macbeth does. | Literary Hub
- Jane Austen, political symbol of early feminism. | Literary Hub
- You can’t really escape your own story: what Grover taught me about the power of literature. | Literary Hub
- Growing up untouchable: Sujatha Gidla tells the story of her lower caste family. | Literary Hub
- Where did “gonzo” come from? What I learned editing Hunter S. Thompson. | Literary Hub
- It Girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown: On Eve Babitz’s Sex and Rage. | Book Marks
- Photographs inspired by the poetry of Ada Limón, Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Adrian Matejka, Jericho Brown, Katy Lederer and Jenny Johnson. | The New York Times
- Catherine Lacey remembers the Cy Twombly exhibition that left her “in love, however briefly, with an entire building and all of its contents.” | The Paris Review
- “A certain suspicion of explanation, particularly biographical explanation, has been at the core of his aesthetic.” On the surprising appearance of a John Ashbery biography. | The New Republic
- “I’d rather point out the abundance of mystery than pretend to solve it. As if I could solve it!” Rumaan Alam interviews The Dark Dark author Samantha Hunt. | The Rumpus
- “The screen adaptation took a novel that suggests sex in only the most allusive and elusive of ways and put that erotic energy on unapologetic display.” On Jane Austen’s female gaze (and a certain “voluminous tunic”). | The Atlantic
- “Expressing what’s inside the heart and mind of my autistic self will always be problematic, I think.” An interview with Naoki Higashida, the author of The Reason I Jump. | TIME
- The tides have turned since the Brontë sisters and George Elliot were publishing under manly names: Men are now adopting androgynous pseudonyms to sell psychological thrillers. | Jezebel
Also on Lit Hub: Announcing the winners of Daniel Handler’s Per Diem Press contest · Five Books Making News: Returns, refugees, and religious cults · From Adam O’Riordan’s new collection, The Burning Ground.
