Lodestones are dull, lumpy, and slate-gray, but their “magnetic intelligence” made them fabulously expensive.

Why are Jane Austen books still so beloved? A linguist argues it has more to do with Austen's masterful use of language than with plot.

Charlotte Gilman wrote her famous short story in response to her own experience having her pain belittled and misunderstood by a male physician.

The “renegade” scholar Stanley Fish is really a bit dramatic.

Novel reading was once regarded as an idle occupation, just as Internet use is now.

Discover the real men Bruce Holsinger based his characters on.

Little Orphan Annie is the latest in a sequence of pop culture foundlings, but America’s orphans of the Great Depression weren’t endearing at all.