TODAY: In 1860, English suffragette, and editor of literary journals Dora Marsden, seen here being arrested for disrupting a meeting at Manchester University in 1909, dies.
- A highly specific, uncannily accurate literary gift guide for just about everyone in your life. | Lit Hub
- “So often defined almost solely by her depression and suicidality, Plath was able to strikingly, if ambivalently, affirm life.” Gabrielle Bellot on Sylvia Plath and the many shades of depression. | Lit Hub
- How do you photograph the wind? Bill Buford on the Rachel Cobb’s photographic quest, Mistral. | Lit Hub
- Oliverio Girondo’s absurd cosmopolitan world: meet the flamboyant poet of the Argentine avant-garde. | Lit Hub
- Things are heating up in our countdown of the top literary news stories of 2018 (to wit: lawsuits for everyone!). | Lit Hub
- From unusual serial killers to obsessive friendships, all the best crime and mystery debuts of 2018. | CrimeReads
- Patricia Lockwood on Lucia Berlin’s stories, Doreen St. Felix on Michelle Obama’s memoir, and more of the Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week. | Book Marks
- Leah Schnelbach on 5 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books by Women to Bring You Into 2019. | Book Marks
- “I read so much about motherhood. Or maybe it was that everything I read seemed to be about motherhood.” Leslie Jamison on reading while nursing. | The Paris Review
- Did you know that Charles Darwin’s grandfather was famous for his poems about plant sex? Well, now you do. P.S: his name was Erasmus. | Smithsonian
- Tommy Orange has won the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize for his “groundbreaking, extraordinary” There There. | Center for Fiction
- “Her subtly subversive ironic language allows readers to receive her work in a layered way.” On the persistent power of Jane Austen’s linguistics. | JSTOR
- If you’re bored with best-of-the-year lists from actual book people and want to know what Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Gisele Bündchen are reading, this is the list for you! | The Wall Street Journal
- Did any of your favorite book-to-film adaptations make it into this year’s National Film Registry? | Vulture
- Thank goodness for Elko, Nevada: The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering turns 35. | Poets & Writers
Also on Lit Hub: On So Many Damn Books, Jonathan Lethem talks Trump anxiety and leaning into repetition • Steve Almond, Mark Leibovich, and Etan Thomas on Fiction/Non/Fiction • Read a story from Cam Xue’s collection, Love in the New Millennium
