Feminist Bookstore News by the Numbers

Now part of Reveal Digital, Feminist Bookstore News was a vital source of information (and gossip) amid a flourishing in publishing fifty years ago.
A General View of the Falls of Niagara by Alvan Fisher, 1820

The Fashionable Tour: or, The First American Tourist Guidebook

Offering advice for visiting Sarasota Springs and other sights, Gideon Davison combined the travel narrative and road book to create a new type of travel guide.
The Confederate States almanac for 1862

On Harvests and Histories

Almanacs from the Civil War era reveal how two sides of an embattled nation used data from the natural world to legitimize their claims to statehood.
Portrait of Mary Taylor

Mary Taylor, Charlotte Brontë’s Cool Friend

An independent traveler and business owner, Taylor inspired many of Brontë's own enterprises, including her relocation to Brussels.
A black preacher addressing his mixed congregation on a plantation

When Enslaved Virginians Demanded the Right to Read

In 1723, a group of enslaved African Americans petitioned the Bishop of London to ensure that their children could attend school and learn to read the Bible.
Ismat Chughtai

Ismat Chughtai’s Quilt and Queer Desire

Long before India decriminalized homosexuality—in September 2018—the short story "Lihaaf" sparked outrage and a lawsuit for its depiction of same-sex, intergenerational intimacy.
From the cover of The Black Mask magazine, June 1, 1923

The Gumshoes Who Took On the Klan

In the pages of Black Mask magazine, the Continental Op and Race Williams fought the KKK even as they shared its love of vigilante justice.
Duke Magazine

Why the “Black Playboy” Folded After Just Six Issues

Duke magazine aimed to celebrate the good life for the era’s growing Black middle-class.
Scholars attending a lecture in the Ashmolean Museum

The Invention of the Archive

Seventeenth-century scholars were horrified by how much ancient knowledge had been lost when the monasteries dispersed.
The editorial staff at Reuters Press Agency, circa 1900.

The Invention of Journalistic Objectivity

In the contemporary United States we tend to expect journalists to separate fact and opinion. It's actually a relatively new phenomenon.