A Hundred Years of Mrs. Dalloway
An exemplar of modernism, Virginia Woolf's revolutionary novel explored ideas—psychology, sexuality, imperialism—that roiled the twentieth century.
Joseph Conrad’s Travel Stories Weren’t Black and White
Conrad’s celebration of imperial exploration is accompanied by an acknowledgment that such feats often go hand-in-hand with oppression and exploitation.
The Sociopolitical Impact of A Passage to India
E. M. Forster’s novel captured not only the tensions between colonizers and colonized but also the fraught internal politics that shaped India’s fight for independence.
Up the Junction: A Place, A Fiction, A Film, A Condition
In addition to a New Wave hit, Nell Dunn's 1963 book about young women in a poor London neighborhood inspired a Ken Loach adaption that helped shift British attitudes toward abortion.
What We’re Reading 2023
Enjoy a fresh batch of year-end book reports from all of the readers, writers, and editors at JSTOR Daily!
Ulysses Obscenity Decision: Annotated
In December 1933, Judge John Woolsey issued what would become one of the best known legal decisions on obscenity in United States history.
A Centennial Celebration of Spring and All
William Carlos Williams's hybrid work of poetry and prose both upended narrative conventions and delighted in the wondrous, unifying force of imagination.
The Spy Who Shared My Foyer
Luminaries from Agatha Christie to Walter Gropius gravitated to London’s “Lawn Road Flats.” So too did a far less conspicuous cohort: assets for the USSR.
Lost in Translation: Ezra Pound’s Imagism and the Angel Island Poets
As Pound was making a splash with “translations” of Chinese poetry, immigrants from China were etching poems of despair into the walls of a detention facility.