Archive for May, 2007



Illustrated Shakespeare: representing Ophelia

Emory’s Shakespeare Illustrated collects 19th century British artists’ renderings of scenes from the Bard’s plays. A few of French artist Eugène Delacroix’s Hamlet paintings and lithographs are included. Professor Harry Rusche notes that the lithographs were inspired by an 1827 English production of Hamlet in Paris, with Harriet Smithson in the part of Ophelia. (Hector Berlioz saw the same production . . .

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Best seller or bust?

Then We Came to the End sells 50,000 copies, earns out, and is pronounced a disappointment? Can we talk again when the paperback breathes new life into sales?

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The voluble Ms. Porter

“Much of what follows is factually incorrect,” notes the Paris Review interview with Katherine Anne Porter. In honor of her ever-changing life story, the editors left “fake enough alone.”

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