Pulling Pranks: James Stern’s Reminiscences of an Edwardian Childhood

James Stern never achieved literary celebrity. His books were few, his letters many and his memoir unfinished, yet what he wrote was the stuff of life-the beauty and tragedy of humanity. His memoir, “the problem book,” was not fashioned into a comprehensive work; what we show you from the Stern collection of the British Library are recollections that capture the adventure of childhood set against the backdrop of a mythical time and rarefied place.

Lost in Lotus Land: Ben Hecht’s Hollywood Letters

Oh how tired I am. From writing 100 pages of dialogue & continuity in 4 days-rewritten as well-12 hours a day without stopping-all I feel is numbness and a buzzing. And I remember my Rosie, my Owner, and sigh, close eyes, dream a minute, kiss your knees, your thighs, while something in me murmurs mama, sweet one, sweet Rosie-and I feel a phantom of sweetness as if this moment too were a dream like last night.

Found Text: William Gaddis

Featuring the stories: Jake’s Dog The Rehearsal A Father is Arrested

The Swan

It had been like this for the past few nights, breathlessly still and overpoweringly hot, as though the earth’s long, circular motion through space had been suspended, perhaps through a kind of cosmic lassitude, and that [sic] now the discouraged sphere was drifting slowly downwards through dense, sultry darkness toward a forced landing in the sun’s great bin of ashes.

The Same Dust, the Same Wind: The Afghanistan Memoirs of Annemarie Schwarzenbach

How does one do justice to a woman who drove a Ford across the Hindu Kush, yet died in a fall from her bicycle near her home in Switzerland at the age of thirty-four?

Marlene Dietrich: A Portrait

This feature is not currently available online. In 1929 a legend was born.

Publication is Not Recommended: From the Knopf Files

Mention publishing these days and people in the industry, from the writers and agents to those working in book sales and publishing houses, think about consolidation, the blockbuster complex, abandonment of the midlist, the lowest common denominator and the bottom line.

An Interview with Knopf Editor Ashbel Green

Interviewer: According to Alfred Knopf’s own remarks, made in a talk in 1949, Alfred got into the business partly by getting to know good bookstores, including a model publisher in England, Martin Secker. Then he came back to New York …

The Porter-Warren Letters: The Turbulent Years

These letters cover 1935 to 1942, the years when Robert Penn Warren and Katherine Anne Porter emerged as important American literary figures. Warren, fifteen years younger than Porter, was enormously active during this time. In addition to his writing, teaching, and traveling, he helped found a major literary magazine and cowrite, with Cleanth Brooks, one of the most influential textbooks in American literary history. Porter, meanwhile, was publishing some of her best stories, in the spare, realistic, yet numinous style that was her trademark.

The Search After Happiness

This “Found Text” feature is not currently available online. Not many years ago there lived in a certain city a person of the name of Henry O Donell. In figure he was tall, of a dark complexion and searching black …

Will Mr. Merriwether Return from Memphis?

This “Found Text” is not currently available online. A never-before-published, full-length play by Tennessee Williams.

“My Luck, Just Now, Is Pretty Hard”: Letters From Bret Harte, 1872-78

However modest his modern reputation, Bret Harte deserves to be resurrected from the footnote. As founding editor of the Overland Monthly in 1868, he was mentor to an entire generation of Western American writers, among them Samuel Clemens, Ambrose Bierce, Joaquin Miller and Ina Coolbrith.

The Letters of Dolly and Zane Grey

Wednesday, Feb. 18, 1913

My dear husband,

This is my first letter to you. Whether it will be the last is still a matter of conjecture on my part. But I simply cannot resist telling you of our interview this morning.

Civil War Memories

Elizabeth Clift Bacon, Libbie to family and friends, was born April 8, 1842, in Monroe, Michigan. The only surviving child of Daniel and Eleanor Bacon, she was educated at private girls’ schools in Monroe and New York. In 1862, at Thanksgiving party, she was introduced to a young Union Captain, George Armstrong Custer, called Autie by famile and friends.

“So Atrocious a World”: Selections from the Unpublished Letters of Henry James

This found text is not currently available online.

The Dead Sea Scrolls: The Book of Jubilees

1:27 Then he told the angel of the presence to dictate to Moses from the beginning of the creation until my sanctuary is built among them for all the ages of eternity. 1:28 The Lord will appear in the site of all, and all will know that I am the God of Israel, father of all Jacob’s children, and king on Mt. Zion for all the ages of eternity. Then Zion and Jerusalem will be holy. 1:29 The angel of the presence, who was going along in front of the Israelite camp, took the tablets (which told) of the divisions of the years from the time the law and the testimony were createdÑ for the weeks of their jubilees, year by year in their full number, and their jubilees from the time of the creation until the time of the new creation when the heavens, the earth, and all their creatures will be renewed like the powers of the sky and like all the creatures of the earth, until the time when the temple of the Lord will be created in Jerusalem on Mt. Zion. All the luminaries will be renewed for (the purposes of) healing, health, and blessing for all the elect ones of Israel and so that it may remain this way from that time throughout all the days of the earth.

Found Text: A Letter to Tennessee Williams

This text is not currently available online.

Found Text: Oliver to Williams: An Introduction

This text is not currently available online.

Unmailed Answer

In 1886 Mark Twain received a letter from a former newspaper editor requesting a recommendation from Twain for a government “consulship.” But the poor fellow did not reckon with Twain’s remembering a negative newspaper review of one of his stage performances …